Housing Hope: Ensuring a Better Future for Our Community
This story is brought to you by Live in Everett Member, Lamoureux Real Estate.
In 1987, Housing Hope started as a housing development institution created in response to our community’s need for a comprehensive and coordinated response to homelessness and housing issues in general.
By sponsoring a wide range of housing projects from emergency shelters to homeownership programs, Housing Hope supports families in accessing safe shelter, and by connecting these families to case managers, this organization ensures people have access to resources so they can break the cycle of poverty. Their philosophy is that secure housing should be integrated with support services so that families can have increased opportunities for self-sufficiency and become engaging members of their community.
And that’s not all! Housing Hope supports a number of community-based programs outside of their housing programs, including:
Career and Job Skills Training
Housing Hope sponsors a number of employment programs including partnering residents with Employment Specialists, facilitating career pathways for individuals with support from local colleges and other agencies, and empowering individuals for success through learning life skills such as goal-setting and money management.
Knife skills with Jon in the Kindred Kitchen training program // HopeWorks Social Enterprise
Support for Children
They also recognize the impact homelessness has directly on children and, through ChildHope, seek to address those impacts with in-home family and child specialists on Housing Hope properties, evening parent education courses, housing projects dedicated to young mothers experiencing homelessness, and Tomorrow’s Hope Child Development Center, which offers free, in-house child-care programs and supports.
Team HomeBuilding working with homeowners to build their homes through Team HomeBuilding's "Sweat Equity" program. // Housing Hope
Life Skills Support and Training
The Team Homebuilding Program seeks to help working families own homes by partnering them with a team of builders and construction experts to build their own homes.
Housing Hope’s College of Hope has been empowering families to continue learning and developing various life skills to create a better future for themselves. Classes fall into four broad categories: family life, economic well-being, health and wellness, and housing expertise.
Sharon (Instructor) & Nevah Participating in Kaleidoscope, a parenting group offered by College of Hope, which is designed to help parents facilitate happy and healthy learning opportunities with their children through play // Housing Hope
HopeWorks Social Enterprise develops and manages a number of businesses (Kindred Kitchen, GroundWorks Landscaping, and Renew Home & Decor) to provide job training for families who are experiencing or are at-risk for homelessness.
Student Homelessness Projects
To address student homelessness, Housing Hope has sought to partner directly with school districts to provide housing on surplus properties. While not all projects are approved (such as the Norton Playfield in N. Everett), others are in progress (such as Scriber Field, part of the Edmonds School District)
We all play a role in ensuring a better future for our community. Ensuring housing is accessible and available is a critical step in this process and, by combining this basic need with other resources and supports necessary for self-sufficiency (like child-care and job-skills training), Housing Hope has created a sustainable system for families to move towards success.
How You Can Help
There are multiple ways to get involved with Housing Hope, including donating time, skills and talents, items for the College of Hope and the Child Development Center, and even good ol’ fashioned money. In addition to the donations, there are also regular fundraising events throughout the year.
For Example...
On May 20th, Housing Hope is sponsoring their annual Stone Soup, where community members can come together to learn the impact they’ve made in supporting Housing Hope, to hear participants’ success stories, and to listen to the organization’s plans for the future.
THANKS TO LAMOUREUX REAL ESTATE FOR POWERING THIS STORY.
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Angela Di Filippo currently works in State Social Services and recently earned her Masters in Industrial/Organizational Psychology with extensive training in evidence-based leadership coaching. Angela moved from North Carolina to Washington 6 years ago and has proudly called Everett her home for 5 of those years. When not helping others solve problems in creative and strength-driven ways, Angela enjoys her time painting, hiking with her terrier-mix, Indy, and eating waffles.
