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!

Article in Puyallup Herald re: HHH’s 25 years of serving families…

A good article from the Puyallup Herald – thanks much!

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.

News Tribune article highlights 25 years at Helping Hand House

Wanted to point you a great article in the Tacoma News Tribune highlighting the lessons learned in 25 years of working to end homelessness in Pierce County. Attached below, check it out at the TNT here.

For 25 years, these helping hands have worked to end homelessness, a family at a time

KATHLEEN MERRYMAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Last updated: June 3rd, 2009 12:15 AM (PDT)

In a perfect world, 4,618 families would show up for this month’s 25th anniversary of Helping Hand House.A total of 12,554 moms, dads and kids would be there to tell how the Puyallup nonprofit helped them rebuild their lives after homelessness.

When Margie Addington founded Helping Hand House to serve families in East Pierce County, in 1984, she worked on her own with the backing of service clubs and grants.

The original idea was basic: Get families into housing. Expect them to find a job.

When Addington retired in 1997, Helping Hand House operated 11 homes on an annual budget of $165,000.

The annual budget is $1.9 million now. They operate 60 units, and every family has a case manager.

“They were one of the first organizations to shift their mission from ‘serving’ to ending and preventing homelessness,” said Troy Christensen, chairman of The Road Home leadership team. “They were the first organization to provide Housing First to the families in Pierce County.”

Kathy Doubikin knows about it first-hand. After a move and a divorce, she and her three sons ended up without a home, friends or family. In early 2008, Helping Hands had an opening.

“Having a place to go was a blessing,” the Puyallup resident said. “Having someone to listen to, care for and encourage me to take the steps necessary to start saving and rebuilding was a blessing.”

She began taking classes on budgeting, home and car repairs, job searches, cooking, canning. She got her sons enrolled in school. She opened a savings account. She found three part-time jobs, one of which developed into a full-time managerial position.

“I’m at the point of graduating out this Christmas,” she said.

“They back you up,” Doubikin said. “They listen to you.”

Empathy for the homeless goes right to the top of the Helping Hands hierarchy – all the way to Nola Renz, the executive director who replaced Addington 12 years ago.

Renz grew up in a family that bounced in and out of housing from state to state in the Northern Plains.

“The earliest recollection I have of it was when I was about 4,” she said. “We were sleeping in our car. I didn’t know we were homeless. We were camping.”

There were no shelters then, no food banks. The family had burned through the kindness of relatives. Renz attended nearly two dozen schools, none of which had help for homeless students.

“The schools wouldn’t let you take books home,” she said. “You couldn’t check out library books.”

Renz once took 50 cents from the family’s money jar to buy school supplies. Her father met her at the door with a switch.

“That’s why it is so important to me that our children are fully equipped for school,” she said. “That is huge.”

“We see ourselves ending homelessness, not just for grown-ups, but for the next generation,” said Marion Hogan, Helping Hand House’s deputy development director.

Renz graduated from high school, married, had three children and fled a dangerous relationship. She struggled, found a decent job, then another, and put herself through college.

Today Renz tells her clients that if she could work and go to school at the same time, they can, too.

And they do.

“If our parents are in school, they have to work 20 hours a week, too.” Hogan said.

They know they are the lucky ones.

Last month, more than 300 families called for help that would keep them from losing their homes.

“We could serve 18,” Renz said.

Another 400 people called needing homes.

“That’s up from 50 a month” last year, she said. “We can serve four, or five, tops. Pretty depressing, huh?”

You bet it is, especially since Helping Hand House has shown us how to do better.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com

What: 25th anniversary celebration for Helping Hand House

When: June 11, 3 to 7 p.m.

Where: Pioneer Park pavilion, downtown Puyallup

Originally published: June 3rd, 2009 12:15 AM (PDT)