Ideas to reduce homelessness are implemented

By Mary Stamp

When Joe Ader came to Family Promise of Spokane, he brought with him ideas about how to end poverty. Since then, he has used his position to implement those ideas of ways to prevent and reduce homelessness.

The program in early 2016 was then serving 43 people through rotational church shelters. By December 2016, Family Promise started Open Doors, a 24/7 emergency shelter for families at Emmanuel Family Life Center.

In 2017, it started using Joe's ideas for eviction prevention and housing stabilization to prevent families from becoming homeless.

Today, 63 percent of the families Family Promise serves are those they keep from becoming homeless, and 37 percent are being rehoused—with 10 percent of those housed in the emergency shelter and 27 percent rehoused while they are staying with families and friends.

Navigating today's homelessness environment is in flux, said Joe, who pointed out that policies at the federal level impact Family Promise indirectly, through changes in funding for the safety net, refugees and Section 8 vouchers for people with disabilities. As a result, families who were once served by other agencies are coming to their shelter and staying longer.

Because families on the verge of homelessness can be identified earlier through the schools, Family Promise has housing case managers assigned to work alongside six high school campuses. In those schools and their connected feeder schools, they intervene when they identify students whose families are at risk of homelessness, Joe explained.

Housing case managers are currently working with Central, East and West Valley, University, North Central and Shadle Park high schools. Family Promise plans to expand next year to Rogers and Lewis and Clark, and eventually to Mead and Mount Spokane. Case managers also take referrals from the elementary and middle schools that feed into those schools.

"Through talking with school staff, officials and teachers, the case managers find families before they show up at a shelter," said Joe. "We serve families before they are evicted or right after they lose housing and are with family and friends. We house them before they need a shelter."

Family Promise's emergency shelters serve families in the city, suburbs, small towns and rural areas in Spokane County.

While there is much construction of new housing in the I-90 corridor east to Idaho and in Mead, Joe is unsure how much of it is affordable.

"We continue to see high levels of need," he said. "We are serving more families than ever and have seen a 37 percent increase in the number of families served in all programs—from 800 families last year to more than 1,100 families with 4,160 people."

Joe said Family Promise has been able to rehouse people by developing good relationships with landlords and property managers.

The case managers meet with each family, learn their needs and try to find housing near where the children go to school, but that does not always work.

They help the family prepare documents and secure income. Then they work with the landlords to accept the families and keep payments down.

"Landlords like to work with us because we provide stabilization and support for the families. If a landlord has a problem with a family, they know they can contact us, so we can work with the family and they don't feel they have to evict them," Joe explained.

Joe finds more challenges working with corporate-owned housing that establish blanket policies about not accepting someone with a criminal record, a poor credit history or a previous eviction.

"It's easier for me to talk with property owners who have a few units and ask them to work with us," he said.

"The prevention side of helping families keep housing is a critical part of what we do," said Joe, "because children who experience homelessness are 46.9 times more likely to be homeless as an adult.

"I have said for years that the downtown street homelessness happens because of what was not done for kids earlier. What starts with kids in homeless families ends downtown," he said.

"It starts with newborns. Last year we had 25 newborns come through the house we have as a shelter for five families in separate rooms," Joe said.

Family Promise now serves up to 70 people a night in its three locations. The emergency walk-in mass congregate shelter at 2002 E. Mission is where families with children come. All the families first come to that shelter. If there is an opening, they can go to one of the houses.

Aside from the main shelter, two houses are located near the Gonzaga University campus. In each house, they share a common kitchen and living room. One house is for five families with newborns, and the other house is for four families.

"I see hope and resilience in our kids, despite their challenges navigating trauma," he said. "More than half of our families have experienced domestic violence, yet the kids still play on the playground we opened last year, still sing songs and still do crafts. I see hope for their future if we can stabilize them and their families."

Joe said Family Promise has two programs.

On the "Keep Housing" side, they offer rental assistance and stabilization programs.

On the "Get Housing" side, they have the shelters and high school case managers.

Some case managers are based in schools; some work out of the shelter, and some work in the office with families living around the county. There are 12 case managers each in the get-housing and keep-housing programs.

In addition to shelter staff and case managers, the nonprofit's 54 staff work in client assistance programming, raise funds and do administration.

"In the long run, we want to close shelters, to make them unnecessary through prevention, reaching people before they are evicted," said Joe.

Family Promise's focus on families with children—or expecting a child—overlaps with other agencies. Volunteers of America's Crosswalk serves unaccompanied youth and young adults, but youth and young adults with children come to Family Promise. Catholic Charities' House of Charity houses single men and women in emergencies. The Union Gospel Mission shelters men, especially those seeking substance use disorder treatment. It also has a shelter for women and children. Family Promise is the only shelter taking single fathers with children.

Joe works with Catholic Charities to house some families in Sisters Haven near Spokane Falls Community College, at Gonzaga Haven and at Pope Francis Haven in Spokane Valley.

"Our first priority is to house families wherever we can, but my preference is to house them in mixed socio-economic neighborhoods, so they are entwined with a community with people of different backgrounds," said Joe.

"We want families to be part of the community fabric, not just with other low-income families. It's challenging to find," he said, "but it's better for family stability for them to be in a diverse income community. When we put everyone of one socioeconomic class into the same community, we create two-sides-of-the-tracks mindsets.

"For the community, schools and people, it's better that people live together so they know and understand different people," he continued. "I appreciate mixed socioeconomic developments."

In 10 years of implementing his ideas about ending poverty, Joe has learned and adapted as he has navigated the challenges presented by changes in the national administration, state policies and city ordinances.

To share his commitment to engage with people and help them break out of generational poverty he has published a book, The Ghetto, The Garden and the Gospel: What Every Christian Needs to Understand about Poverty in America. An updated edition with a workbook will come out this summer on Amazon, he said.

For information, call 747-5487, email office@familypromiseofspokane.org or visit familypromiseofspokane.org