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.

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/11/01/v-printerfriendly/1888087/we-can-expect-a-dramatic-rise.html#ixzz1ckmqTOm9

Spread the word – post it to your Facebook wall, email the link – vote early and often.

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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.

Click here to Vote Now!

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.

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.

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.

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!!!

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.

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!

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 AM

A 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.”

- 115 birthday cakes were donated ($1,150 at $10.00 per cake)
- 1,102 total volunteer hours
- 150 volunteers throughout the year
- 13 group yard projects were completed
- 38 volunteers volunteered on an ongoing basis (birthday cakes, birthday gifts, roberts cleaning, etc.)
- 151 quilts received ($13,090)
- Supply drive donations (toilet paper, paper towels, toys, books, etc) ($4,118)
- 2 cars donated ($2,575)
- Holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Back to School) ($56,839)
- Household furnishings (includes furniture and other household items) ($8,943)

And this total doesn’t even include the use of a duplex, donated every year by the South Hill Rotary, and other donated units across Pierce County.

Isn’t that amazing?? Thank you to each and every one of you that contributed to our families this year – this is $113,616 worth of assistance that went directly to serving some of the neediest families in our community. Kudos! You do it well, Pierce County!

Dear Nola,

In 1985, four women were inspired to create something new and special in Seattle: an organization devoted to helping children in need, and to growing social service philanthropy among their peers.  From this inspired beginning, Northwest Children’s Fund has evolved into one of the Northwest’s premier grant-making organizations, igniting the philanthropic spirit and connecting nearly ten million donor dollars to agencies like yours, who share our mission of ending child abuse and neglect.

I am writing on behalf of the NWCF Board of Directors to invite Helping Hand House to accept a designation as a “Silver Anniversary Partner” as Northwest Children’s Fund celebrates its first quarter century of connecting our community with children in need. You are one of 25 agencies that our Board of Directors has selected from our 300 past grant recipients for this designation.

While the designation does not carry any monetary value, we look forward to commemorating our relationship to date and to highlight the work of both of our organizations.

We hope that you will elect to accept our invitation, so that we may highlight your organization as one of NWCF’s longstanding partners in the fight against child abuse and neglect – and so that you may share with us this year in our celebrations and outreach efforts.

Sincerely,

Victoria Peattie Helm

Executive Director

Needless to say, we accepted the honor! Thank you to Northwest Children’s Fund for their long partnership with our families and mission at Helping Hand House. We’re proud to be serving, and honored to be recognized in such a way.

Tacoma, WA, November 12, 2009 –When Milgard Windows & Doors presented an $8,334 grant to Helping Hand House, the Tacoma-based building products manufacturer brought to life the phrase “lending a hand to a neighbor in need.” Helping Hand house is one of three non-profit agencies sharing a $25,000 grant directed by Milgard from the Masco Corporation Foundation, the charitable arm of Milgard’s parent company, Masco. Other beneficiaries include Simi Valley Samaritan Center, Simi Valley, California, and A New Leaf, Mesa, Arizona.

http://www.pr.com/press-release/192305

“Helping Hand House is dedicated to preventing and ending family homelessness right here in Pierce County, a cause particularly relevant in today’s economic environment,” said Milgard President, Gary Gessel. “The organization is the embodiment of the kind of community-based organization Milgard and its parent company, Masco, support through the Masco Corporation Foundation and our own community action team activities.”

“We’re very grateful for this grant from Milgard,” said Nola Renz, executive director of Helping Hand House. “We’ve seen the need for our utility assistance, and transitional, emergency and permanent supportive housing assistance programs quadruple in the last 18 months. Milgard’s gift is a tremendous help as foreclosures on homes and even multi-family apartment buildings in Pierce County have risen to record levels.”

Recipients of the grants were identified in a survey of company employees to determine which non-profit organizations were most responsive to the hunger and homelessness needs in their own communities. The gift continues a long tradition of community support by Milgard family members, Milgard Windows & Doors and the Masco Foundation.

In addition to such corporate gifts, Milgard Matching Gift Community Action Team volunteers participate in community events, fundraising and community improvement activities through volunteerism and monetary donations. More than 80% of Milgard’s Tacoma area employees live in Pierce County, Washington. In 2008, Milgard employees gave more than $86,000 in donations and over 8,000 hours in community service to organizations in the county.
Milgard matches employee donations and provides additional incentive for employee volunteerism by doubling the size of the matching donation when the employee has donated 50 or more hours of time to the same organization in the past 12 months.

As an organization, we’re so grateful to be here to walk with hundreds of families every year, experiencing the pain of loss and the triumph of overcoming again. The gift of seeing kids eyes light up as load after load of Christmas presents pour through the doorway (provided by incredible volunteers in the community!). We couldn’t be happier to be serving those we serve, loving families and sharing the ups and downs of normalcy after a the crisis mentality fades away… Ending family homelessness. Let this be the year for it! But in the meantime, we’re sharing life with some wonderful people, and that’s something we’re grateful for. Thank you!

Click here to see the video.

Please click here to download the 2008 Annual Report as a pdf…

Research finds that neighborhood is key to income mobility
Location keeps some lower on ladder

WASHINGTON – Researchers have found that being raised in poor neighborhoods plays a major role in explaining why African American children from middle-income families are far more likely than white children to slip down the income ladder as adults.

The Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project caused a stir two years ago by reporting that nearly half of African American children born to middle-class parents in the 1950s and ’60s had fallen to a lower economic status as adults, a rate of downward mobility far higher than that for whites.

This week, Pew will release findings of a study that helps explain that economic fragility, pointing to the fact that middle-class blacks are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there.

Even as African Americans have made gains in wealth and income, the report found, black children and white children are often raised in starkly different environments. Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 were raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared to just 6 percent of white children.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents’ education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

See article here.

That’s right – kids actually lose a significant amount of a grade level over the summer – forcing the next year’s teacher to major in review before they can teach the new material. Helping Hand House has worked to combat this for several years in the children of our families, by providing a fantastic reading program of our own (and encouraging participation in the library’s version as a bonus! :) ). Children have the opportunity to win prizes and continue to grow mentally, while discovering and cultivating the joy of reading!

In honor of a summer full of reading, New York Times Op-Ed writer Nicholas Kristof assembled the following list of great books:

July 5, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

The Best Kids’ Books Ever

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

So how will your kids spend this summer? Building sand castles at the beach? Swimming at summer camp? Shedding I.Q. points?

In educating myself this spring about education, I was aghast to learn that American children drop in I.Q. each summer vacation — because they aren’t in school or exercising their brains.

This is less true of middle-class students whose parents drag them off to summer classes or make them read books. But poor kids fall two months behind in reading level each summer break, and that accounts for much of the difference in learning trajectory between rich and poor students.

A mountain of research points to a central lesson: Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television this summer, and get them reading. Let me help by offering my list of the Best Children’s Books — Ever!

So here they are, in ascending order of difficulty, and I can vouch that these are also great to read aloud.

1. “Charlotte’s Web.” The story of the spider who saves her friend, the pig, is the kindest representation of an arthropod in literary history.

2. The Hardy Boys series. Yes, I hear the snickers. But I devoured them myself and have known so many kids for whom these were the books that got them excited about reading. The first in the series is weak, but “House on the Cliff” is a good opener. (As for Nancy Drew, I yawned over her, but she seems to turn girls into Supreme Court justices. Among her fans as kids were Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.)

3. “Wind in the Willows.” My mother read this 101-year-old English classic to me, and I’m still in love with the characters. Most memorable of all is Toad — rich, vain, childish and prone to wrecking cars.

4. The Freddy the Pig series. Published between 1927 and 1958, these 26 books are funny, beautifully written gems. They concern a talking pig, Freddy, who is lazy, messy and sometimes fearful, yet a loyal friend, a first-rate detective and an impressive poet. These were my very favorite books when I was in elementary school. A good one to start with is “Freddy the Detective” or “Freddy Plays Football.” (Avoid the first and weakest, “Freddy Goes to Florida.”)

5. The Alex Rider series. These are modern British spy thrillers in which things keep exploding in a very satisfying way. Alex amounts to a teenage James Bond for the 21st century.

6. The Chronicles of Narnia series. Look, the chance to read these books aloud is by itself a great reason to have kids.

7. “Gentle Ben.” The coming-of-age story of a sickly, introspective Alaskan boy who makes friends with an Alaskan brown bear, to the horror of his tough, domineering father.

8. “Anne of Green Gables.” At a time when young ladies were supposed to be demure and decorative, Anne emerged to become one of the strongest and most memorable girls in literature.

9. “The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be.” This is a hilarious, poignant and exceptionally well-written memoir of childhood on the Canadian prairies. (Note, if you prefer sweet to funny, try “Rascal” instead.)

10. “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” This classic spawned the Fauntleroy suit and named a duck (Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy). An American boy from a struggling family turns out to be heir to an irritable and fabulously wealthy old English lord, whom the boy proceeds to tame and civilize.

11. “On to Oregon.” This outdoor saga, written almost 90 years ago, is loosely based on the true story of the Sager family journeying by covered wagon in 1848, in the early days of the Oregon Trail. The parents die on route, and the seven children — the youngest just an infant — continue on their own. They are led by 13-year-old John: spoiled, surly, often mean, yet determined and even heroic in keeping his siblings alive.

12. “The Prince and the Pauper.” Most kids encounter Mark Twain through “Tom Sawyer,” but this work is at least as funny and offers unforgettable images of English history.

13. “Lad, a Dog” is simply the best book ever about a pet, a collie. This is to “Lassie” what Shakespeare is to CliffsNotes. The book was published 90 years ago, and readers are still visiting Lad’s real grave in New Jersey — plus, this is a book so full of SAT words it could put Stanley Kaplan out of business.

You can post your own suggestions for best children’s books on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. My own kids have the temerity to think they know better than I which books they’ve enjoyed, so I’ve deigned to post their recommendations there. But listening to one’s children is dangerous: I advocate reading to them instead.

Helping Hand House focuses on homelessness: Organization is celebrating 25 years in East Pierce County

Neil Pierson / Published: June 10th, 2009 08:00 AM

“We’re into permanent solutions,” she reiterated. “We want to provide services and programs that will help families never be homeless again.”

Many of Helping Hand’s “graduates” will be attending the organization’s 25th anniversary party on June 11, Renz said. She thinks that’s a great chance for clients to learn from others who’ve been successful.

Officials with Helping Hand House don’t think in the short term when it comes to solving the problem of homelessness.

Helping Hand, which was founded 25 years ago by Puyallup resident Margie Addington and still bases its efforts in the East Pierce County region, is very clear on its mission: Ending homelessness through a variety of education, awareness and fundraising efforts.

“An overnight shelter is not a good solution for really any homeless people because you can’t do anything,” said Nola Renz, Helping Hand’s executive director for the past 12 years. “All you’re doing the next day is looking for the next place you’re going to stay that night.

“We decided to try to approach this to have a long-term impact on the families and really help them to be stable and self-sufficient when they left us,” she added.When Addington started Helping Hand in 1984 it was a “really small grassroots organization,” Renz said. The organization still wasn’t very big when Renz took over in 1997, providing 11 homes and turning away about 25 families per month because they didn’t have the money to help them.That began to change over the last decade. Helping Hand now has 60 housing units scattered throughout Puyallup, Sumner, Bonney Lake, Buckley, Eatonville and Orting. In 2000 and 2001, the organization benefited from two federal grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which contributed heavily toward the creation of two transitional housing programs and the purchase of 21 homes throughout East Pierce County.

Grant money, however, doesn’t come along very often, Renz said. Helping Hand relies heavily on volunteer support and donations to accomplish its tasks.

Lisa Heintz, Helping Hand’s volunteer coordinator, said a number of churches, community groups and individual partners donate time and money, assist clients with skills training and even find gifts and make birthday cakes for homeless children. Students from Emerald Ridge High School, Rogers High School, Aylen Junior High School and Pacific Lutheran University are just some of the youth who’ve been involved with Helping Hand, Heintz said.

Renz estimates that 75 to 80 percent of the people who seek assistance through Helping Hand eventually wind up with permanent housing. Over 25 years, the organization has served over 4,600 families.

Officials attribute the high success rate to several factors. Case managers help adults achieve financial literacy, proper education and interviewing skills to find employment. They also help children stay in school.

“Our case management is very intensive,” Renz said. “The case manager meets with the family at least once a week, talks to them often every day.”

Providing help for kids is just as crucial as it is for adults, Renz said, because it helps end the cycle of homelessness. Helping Hand’s statistics show that homeless children are four times as likely to have developmental delays and get sick twice as often. Nearly half of homeless school-age children suffer from depression or anxiety.

Helping Hand cites numerous success stories. Heintz spoke about a woman who escaped a “worst of the worse” domestic violence situation with her ex-husband. She had two children under 3 years old, was diagnosed as clinically depressed and had nowhere to live.

Within four months of setting goals, the woman passed her high school equivalency degree test “with flying colors” and the same day obtained a job in the health care field, Heintz said. Within a year of coming to Helping Hand, she had saved enough money to pay for her own residence.

“To be able to see that whole cycle work itself out, it’s pretty incredible,” Heintz said. “When you’re working so closely with these families, you really do get to know them.”

Helping Hand has two different housing plans for clients. Emergency housing provides those in need with a 90-day solution while they work on long-term stability plans with a case manager. Transitional housing allows families a place to live for up to two years while they receive extensive training in financial, education and job skills.

In addition to its emergency housing and transitional housing programs, Helping Hand assists residents who have received eviction or utility shut-off notices by paying their bills.

Happy Mother’s Day.