POWDER SPRINGS — Connie Bullock established the Bullock HOPE House as a way for cancer and rehab patients to stay close to their hospital and doctors offices.

Bullock works with WellStar Cancer Center, Children’s Healthcare at Scottish Rite hospital, the American Cancer Center and other area hospitals and social workers to offer the house in Powder Springs to patients and their families free of charge.

“There’s a definite need for this kind of thing,” Bullock said. “We turned down three families in the last two weeks,”

She started the nonprofit in 2005 after she and her husband loaned a vacant house in Powder Springs they owned to a friend.

“We first offered it to some friends of ours from Cedartown who were driving to Northside (Hospital) for their daughter,” Bullock said.

The home belonged to Bullock’s husband, and their daughter had lived in it for eight years before getting married. When she moved out, the couple was wondering what to do with the house.

After getting its nonprofit status and getting the other legalities in place, the Bullock HOPE House had its first guest in 2008.

Bullock said the home was the first privately owned facility of its kind in Georgia.

The house has two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a laundry room. It is fully furnished and stocked with anything the family may need while staying there.

“We have anywhere from three to eight families each year,” Bullock said. “It depends on their condition. Some people stay only one to two weeks, and some stay for several months.”

The house’s current guests have been living there for four months, she said.

The nonprofit presented its first golf tournament fundraiser “Golf Fore Hope” with the American Cancer Society on April 30 in Hiram.

“We split some of the profits with (American Cancer Society’s) Hope Lodge,” Bullock said. “The funds we raised went to day-to-day operations of the HOPE House.”

There are 31 Hope Lodge locations across the country. Georgia’s Hope Lodge is located in Decatur and functions like Bullock’s HOPE House.

Next year’s Golf Fore Hope will be April 29. For more information, visit bullockhopehouse.org.

“Our tag line is ‘Housing for hope one day at a time,’” Bullock said.