About Us

The people who areactually here.

In this work the most important question isn’t what’s on somebody’s certificate. It’s whether the same person comes back tomorrow. Here’s who’s been here, and how long.

A covered porch with a flag and hanging ferns, the lawn beyond.

Our Family

A Family Business, Built on Family Tradition

AHAVA House is a family business, and it has been from the first day. Behind every home is a family that has served North Carolina for generations, in classrooms, on ambulance calls, in uniform, and at the bedside. Caring for people is not new to us. It is who we have always been.

A family photograph: three men sitting together on a rock outdoors, trees behind them.

Our Roots

The Horton family has called North Carolina home for about ten generations, with deep roots in Chatham County and family still in Pittsboro today. We are descendants of George Moses Horton, the poet who was enslaved in Chatham County and became the first African American in the South to publish a book. Today Horton Residence Hall at UNC Chapel Hill and the Horton school in Pittsboro carry his name. When the Pittsboro school was renamed in his honor, Richard Horton was there.

Education runs deep in this family. Mattie Mozelle Cundiff, Kamali’s grandmother, was in the first four-year graduating class of North Carolina Central University, the Class of 1929. Nearly a hundred years later, Jennifer is a student there.

Jennifer is a fourth-generation Buncombe County native, raised in Swannanoa, and the Horton family has called Buncombe County home for more than thirty years.

Photograph of Richard to come

Richard C. W. Horton

Chief Executive Officer

Richard is a U.S. Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and spent more than 30 years as an engineer with Duke Energy. For 25 of those years he also served with Buncombe County EMS, caring for neighbors on some of the hardest days of their lives. He leads Living Waters the way he has led his family: with faith, steady hands, and a heart for people.

Reverend Janice Horton

Janice taught for more than 30 years at Owen High School. She earned her bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University and her master’s in education from UNC Wilmington. She and Richard have been married 55 years and raised four sons, all college graduates.

Kamali Horton

Co-Founder

Kamali is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill with a degree in mathematical sciences and a minor in physics. He spent about eighteen years at Ingles, working his way from the warehouse floor to driving an 18-wheeler, and logged nearly a million miles without an accident. He left to help build the family business, and today he works in the homes every day.

Jennifer Horton, RN

Founder and Administrator

Jennifer was never given anything. Everything she has, she worked for. She has started over more than once in her life, and every time she came back stronger.

For more than twenty years she has cared for people when they needed it most. She began as a habilitation technician in group homes, then became a CNA, an LPN, and a Registered Nurse, working in long-term care, assisted living, behavioral health, home health, and family practice, and as lead nurse on an Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT). In 2019 she and Kamali founded Living Waters, and she led the work of building it. She is a licensed adult care home administrator, a mother of six, and a student at North Carolina Central University.

“I was never short on ability. I was short on examples.” Today, she is the example.

What We Believe

Everybody in this world is a somebody, and every somebody has a right to be treated right. That is how our family was raised, and it is how we care for every person who calls AHAVA House home.

Featured film

Meet Sherry and Michelle

Meet some of the people who help shape daily life at Living Waters. Hear what they value about their work and the relationships they build along the way.