2009 Annual Report available!
Take a look at the Helping Hand House 2009 Annual Report, with design done pro-bono by Chris Bivins of Spilled Ink Studios. Thanks to all the individuals, churches, groups of all kinds, companies, foundations, and government entities that made it possible to end homelessness for over 250 Pierce County families in 2009. We’d also particularly like to recognize the volunteers who contributed over 1,800 hours of service to the mission, creating quilts, baking cakes, mowing lawns, and so much more.
Enjoy!
Click here to download the report (PDF)
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!!!
Mark your calendar! Next House Warming Tour is Saturday, January 16…
Mark your calendar! Our next House Warming Tour is Saturday, January 16, from 9:30 – 10:30 in the morning. This is a great opportunity to get a cup of coffee, a pastry, and learn more about the issues surrounding family homelessness and ways YOU can make a difference here in our local community. Nola Renz, our Executive Director, will be here and will be looking forward to meeting you! No one asks for money or anything, so it’s safe to bring friends to… (smile)
Click here to RSVP, and we hope to see you January 16!
Foreclosures Force Ex-Homeowners to Turn to Shelters
New York Times, October 18, 2009
The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom. (more)
Neighborhoods are important
Another study this week proved the wisdom of HHH’s method of placing recently homeless families in great neighborhoods. A study from the Pew Trust (see News Tribune article below) demonstrated that the neighborhood one is raised in is a primary factor in determining whether or not someone will live in poverty as an adult or not – and whether they will regress further than their parents. Helping Hand House has made a point of placing our families in homes throughout Pierce County in healthy neighborhoods, without the stigma of being a low-income project, etc. Our criteria? If we wouldn’t move our own family in there, we won’t put those in our programs there either.
Research finds that neighborhood is key to income mobility
Location keeps some lower on ladderWASHINGTON – 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.
How do people become homeless?
A few years ago I was having lunch at a spa and a woman asked to join me. Steamed and soaked into blissful states and wrapped in soft terry robes, we chatted while we ate. She was a physician and I worked for a non-profit. As I shared what my work was like, she asked me a question that shocked me, “How do people become homeless?” When I explained, of course she caught on quickly and I reminded myself how normal it is to be blind to issues that do not confront us directly and how difficult it is to imagine life situations so different from those we experience. Neither she nor anyone close to her had ever been homeless.
Even in this prolonged recession when job losses and foreclosures dominate the news, the facts of life for low income Americans are probably still not clear to most of us. Nationwide, many people in the workforce regularly spend more than 50% of their income on their housing, making them extremely vulnerable and ‘just a paycheck’ away from homelessness. For example, in Pierce County, Washington where Helping Hand House is located, rental vacancies fell to 4.3 percent in February, nearly 2 percentage points lower than the historical average of 6 percent. In the summer quarter of 2008 the cost of rentals rose 2.3 percent and is expected to rise another 6 or 7 points by this summer. (source: Central Puget Sound Real Estate Research Committee, v.59 n.2, p.46-47) When you pair higher rental costs and fewer units available with current unemployment figures, the chief reason for family homelessness becomes vividly clear.
Even when the economy is flush, workers at minimum wage still have to work 81 hours a week to afford the standard two-bedroom unit in Pierce County ($845) and 117 hours for a three-bedroom ($1231). The average income for renters is $11.70 an hour, making decent, safe housing still out of reach for so many families.
There was a time in our country when anyone who worked was pretty much guaranteed a safe, decent place to live. Let’s take a good look at the situation in our communities and do all we can to make that true once again.
