ARTICLE: We can expect a dramatic rise in Pierce County’s homeless population
From the Tacoma News Tribune:
We can expect a dramatic rise in Pierce County’s homeless population
Last updated: November 1st, 2011 12:18 AM (PDT)Imagine for a minute that a tornado hits Sumner and does extensive damage. Afterward, people will be displaced until repairs can be accomplished over a period of several years. The 2010 Census listed Sumner’s population as 9,541 persons.
Now consider that in Pierce County as a whole, an estimated 9,030 persons will lose their DSHS financial assistance by the end of this year. As a result, they will lose – or be at severe risk of losing – their housing. More than 5,000 of those persons will have exhausted their Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) benefits. At least 3,300 will be children.
DSHS will terminate 3,930 adults from Disability Lifeline (DL) today. Some (maybe half) of those persons will be eligible for housing assistance vouchers worth an average of $200 a month for those already housed on DL and $450 a month for those unhoused.
The median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Pierce County currently is around $700 per month. Median rental for a two-bedroom apartment is around $900 per month. Neither price includes the cost of background checks and damage deposits. Given those rental costs, all former DL recipients will be at very significant risk of homelessness.
In addition, foreclosure filings are now averaging around 600 filings per month. We are not certain how many people will lose their housing because of foreclosure, but let’s just guess 1,000 per month or 12,000 per year. Many of those people will move to rental housing, thus driving up the rental rates, and driving down the already very limited supply of available and affordable rentals. Some will become homeless.
AccessPoint4Housing (AP4H) is the central place to call for housing assistance in Pierce County. AP4H reports that it received 3,403 unduplicated requests for housing assistance during July, August and September of this year. It was able to help attain or preserve housing for only 378 of those callers, because resources are so limited. Of the requests, 1,340 came from single parents with children (reflecting the end of their TANF benefits).
A group of people equivalent to the population of Sumner probably will be homeless in Pierce County by the end of this year. Maybe equivalent to the combined populations of Sumner and Orting.
We need to consider how each of us will help our neighbors, because there are not a lot of official options. Our homeless shelters are already full. Government will do what it can, as will the social services organizations. The religious communities will do what they can. But it will not be enough. Displaced people will “double up,” “couch surf” or share housing. People will live in their cars. But it will not be enough.
Despite our best efforts, many people will not find shelter. Even though we do not tend to think of it this way, they will become refugees. They will need both our help and understanding just to survive.
When things get so bad that just trying to survive is the only real choice available to displaced people, local governments will need to accept encampments and tent cities, also insisting that they maintain sanitation, safety and prohibitions on drug abuse.
Al Ratcliffe is a community psychologist who serves as the volunteer chairman of Pierce County’s HUD-mandated housing Continuum of Care Committee. The opinions expressed here are solely his own.
Vote Early, Vote Often: HHH’s Community Garage & Pepsi’s Refresh Everything contest -
Helping Hand House has applied for $250,000 in funding from the Pepsi Refresh Everything project, a unique vote driven grant program. Grants are given on the basis of who gets the most votes by people across the country – people like you. You can vote everyday (please do!). You can vote through Facebook, let people know via Twitter – get the word out and make it happen. And that’s what our families need – for your help to make it happen.
Spread the word – post it to your Facebook wall, email the link – vote early and often.
Transportation is the key
Transportation is a significant key to success for our families, opening doors for stable jobs, childcare, and education. Studies conducted by the Alliance for Youth & Families show that average income increases by 41% with reliable private transportation. In addition, our families can easily save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars by eliminating the need to use public transportation. This gives them the capacity to get and keep a living wage job in communities outside the immediate area in which they live, as well as utilize affordable childcare options and continue to advance their education. Many of our families are living in rural East Pierce County, where there is limited or non-existent public transportation; in effect, without a reliable car, they are stuck at home and on a swift path to again becoming homeless.
The Community Garage
To this end, Helping Hand House has initiated a partnership with Scott Chestain, owner of a local garage Car Clinic, to creatively resolve the transportation issue for the homeless families in Helping Hand House programs. This program, once fully established, has a great potential to be replicable elsewhere throughout the country for other organizations facing similar challenges.
Car Clinic is providing the usage of their shop as an in-kind contribution, as well as leveraging relationships within the community to support some of the most vulnerable families in our region. Families in Helping Hand House programs will have access to a dedicated Auto Repair Technician to perform auto inspections, repairs on vehicles, and routine maintenance.
We anticipate eventually having the ability to receive reliable donated vehicles for the families in our programs, allowing them to experience the full benefits of vehicle ownership.
The Community Garage will also provide an innovative training ground for apprenticeship of adults in our housing programs, helping them acquire job skills for a well-paying career in the auto repair industry.
Deliverables:
* Fund a service and mechanic that provides homeless and low income families a safe reliable resource for work on their vehicles.
* Provide an apprenticeship program for those families wanting to learn the mechanic/automotive technician profession.
* Provides a safety inspection service for family’s vehicles to ensure they are safe for road operation. All of our families have children.
Helping Hand House has applied for a $250,000 grant from Pepsi’s Refresh Everything contest to fund the program – but we need your help!
Grants are given on the basis of who gets the most votes by people across the country – people like you. You can vote everyday. You can vote through Facebook, let people know via Twitter – get the word out and make it happen. And that’s what our families need – for your help to make it happen.
Spread the word – post it to your Facebook wall, email the link – vote early and often.
VIDEO: The costs of poverty – and the solutions we’re working on
This is a great video from The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, illustrating powerfully the struggles of those who are in poverty. Here at Helping Hand House, we’re committed to preventing and ending family homelessness - equipping parents and their children to escape poverty through education, financial management, and careers that will support their families.
The premise we work under? No family who goes through our programs should ever be homeless again. Search through our website or come to a House Warming Tour and learn more about our unique and innovative solutions to family homelessness, eradicating poverty one family at a time, breaking cycles for the generation to come.
No family should ever be homeless. We’re working to make it that way.
Friends make all the difference
When we were growing up, we had friends that cared about the same things that we did and happened to live near enough for it to matter. Sometimes they were smarter and more athletic, sometimes they weren’t – but if they didn’t play nice, they couldn’t come over anymore. Some of those friends were lifelong relationships, and others were those that we stopped talking to after they moved out of the neighborhood and felt awkward seeing in the grocery store. New friends, old friends – it just mattered that we had friends…and it was our friends that made adventures possible and dreams come alive.
Helping Hand House turned 26 this year – 26 years of growing up in east Pierce County. Life is a lot bigger and more complicated than it was in the early days. But we have amazing friends, so many of whom have been with us through thick and thin over the last decades of economic ups and downs in Pierce County.
Some of our friends
We have friends like the Puyallup Valley Quilters (PVQ) – one of several quilting groups who provide a beautiful handmade quilt to every member of every family who comes into one of our housing programs. Whether a person is 4 or 54, there’s nothing like a warm quilt made with care and a little message attached to the corner: “Made with love just for you by the Puyallup Valley Quilters.” It’s one of the touches that help our families understand how much we honor them and want to see them succeed – and it wouldn’t be possible without friends like the Puyallup Valley Quilters. “I think Helping Hand House does wonderful work in our community,” says Patty deCamp, a longtime friend of HHH and PVQ member. “Our members enjoy gathering to make these quilts that they know will be on each family member’s bed when they first move in after being homeless. Those of us who have attended the breakfasts and open houses have been very touched by the stories of homelessness to hope and want to continue to help in additional ways.”
Then there’s the South Hill Rotary, who purchased a duplex over 13 years ago to house homeless families with children. Their investment so many years ago has provided a home to nearly 115 families who would otherwise be living in a car or tent, their children cold at night and hungry on the way to school. They’ve heard the stories and seen the difference that they have made – so much so that they are in the midst of purchasing a second duplex, providing the means and opportunity to help even more families.
Then there are the countless groups of friends from businesses, churches, and community groups who do yard projects, provide extravagantly for families over the holidays, bake birthday cakes, paint homes, wrap gifts, host food and supply drives (and so much more…). It is the Key Bank‘s and Milgard’s of the world – employees giving selflessly with fantastic attitudes in project after project. Milgard even ‘adopted’ all the kids who have birthdays in July.
Insert your name here – for the times you stepped up when the need was great and you had a hand to give. It is people like you that make hope and safety possible when every option looks bleak and it is raining again.
None of what we do could be done without our friends – the volunteers and partners that give themselves away day after day or a weekend a year. It’s a labor of love to serve families in crisis, and a joy to do it together with you.
From all your friends at Helping Hand House, thank you.
Help Rotary give 8+ families a home through Helping Hand House
What is it?
Save the date for Saturday, April 17th and come to the South Hill Rotary Auction – benefiting Helping Hand House, by purchasing a new duplex to house 8+ families every year in our Emergency Housing Program. This is a WORTHY cause, folks.
It’s a cowboy theme and will be so much fun, in addition to raising a huge amount of money for the mission with families.
Details:
Date/Time: Saturday, April 17th from 5:00-9:00pm
Cost: $30 per person – contact Shan at s_vipond@msn.com
Check out the Facebook page on the event here…
Thanks so much for your support of the work of Helping Hand House!!!
As job losses increase, more families looking for a place to sleep at night…
Anyone else confused about whether America is gaining or losing jobs? The newspapers have conflicting articles in the very same issues sometimes…what we know from Pierce County, however, is that more families are on the edge – and off the edge – than has happened in a very long time. The result of this? Family homelessness increases, and with it, calls for help. If you’ve ever answered a call from someone who needs a safe place for their 9 year old daughter to sleep at night, rather than a tent or a car in the WalMart parking lot…it’s absolutely heartbreaking, all the moreso when you have no good news about an open home. People are stepping up all around the County in this time – South Hill Rotary is raising money for a duplex that will house 8+ families a year in our Emergency Housing program (more on this in a blog posting to come).
But the community needs more help – if you want to step in and play a role, click here to check out volunteer opportunities, or join us for a House Warming Tour.
Tough times, folks.
Family Awards Banquet a homerun…
The night was crisp and cool – you could feel the energy in the air. Cheers went up – the crowd went wild for each one of the families in our programs that were there that night. It’s one of the most special parts of what we get to do – celebrate successes that many thought would never come. Often emotional, always joyful, we heard stories about moms and dads pressing through incredible odds to do anything – everything – to give a new life to their kids (and themselves). We were joined by Rhubarb the Reindeer, the mascot for the Tacoma Rainiers – lots of fun, and a great sport…he had to be cooking in his, um, skin.
In chatting with a volunteer afterwards, she and her daughter told me about one of the families they were sitting with. As his case manager talked about the victories of his family, this tough-looking man’s eyes brimmed with tears. Dots connected – how important this work is. And that they got to be a part of it? That’s something really special.
Changing lives and strengthening families – that’s what it means to end family homelessness. Not mere buildings or programs or resources…it’s lives changed one at a time. Thank you for all you do to help us serve these families – we couldn’t do it without you!
$70,000 more to help families in crisis – thank you Paul G. Allen Family Foundation!
This Puyallup Herald article features Helping Hand House and our partnership with the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Enjoy! (or read it here)
Puyallup-area homeless advocates get $70,000
Paul Allen Foundation grant should help about 125 families this year
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
Published: February 3rd, 2010 06:00 AMA four-month-long waiting game concluded happily for Puyallup’s Helping Hand House on Jan. 26 when it received a $70,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
Helping Hand House, which has been assisting homeless families throughout East Pierce County for the past 25 years, was one of 66 non-profit groups in the Pacific Northwest to receive an Allen Foundation grant. The foundation, started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister, Jo Lynn Allen, is donating $4.6 million this year, much of it to groups that assist low-income individuals and families.
Helping Hand House Executive Director Nola Renz said last week that the grant should help about 125 area families during the next year.
“The money will be used in our homeless prevention programs to assist more families who are at risk of eviction or utility shut off,” Renz said.Receiving a grant from the Allen Foundation is a tough task, Renz explained, because only certain organizations are invited to apply. Helping Hand House applied for its grant last fall after meeting and talking with foundation officials.
Philanthropic efforts have been a part of the Allen Foundation’s mission for 20 years, said Bill Vesneski, the group’s evaluation, planning and research director. Helping Hand House stood out as a worthwhile cause because it’s widely known for excellent service, he said.
“They’ve had a very strong commitment as to measuring and monitoring their impact,” Vesneski said.
The money is especially welcome to Helping Hand House at a time when rising unemployment rates are putting more families at risk of living on the streets. The non-profit agency, which has helped more than 4,600 families in Puyallup, Sumner, South Hill and surrounding areas in the past 25 years, isn’t coming close to meeting demands. Two months ago, the group told Puyallup City Council members it had turned away more than 1,600 families during a six-month span of 2009.
“It has been an enormous challenge to continue to serve more families,” Renz said. “There’s limited resources so we’re always turning families away. That’s the discouraging part.”
The Allen Foundation focuses on a number of opportunities in its gifts, including community arts and music programs, youth education classes and job skill development courses.
The foundation has shifted its priorities to focus on victims of the national recession, Visneski said, and more groups like Helping Hand House are on the slate for grants in 2011.
“The goal is to kind of get the money into emergency relief, to get the money where it’s needed,” Visneski said. “We wanted to make sure we were doing work in Pierce County.”
Helping Hand House prides itself on being a lasting solution to homelessness because families who seek transitional housing opportunities learn to be financially sound and gain employment skills. The organization estimated at least three of four families that complete a transitional housing program don’t become homeless again.
“The exciting thing is that when families leave us they have a permanent solution,” Renz said. “They go into a situation where they have a home and a living-wage job.”
