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Project Hope – a groundbreaking program that could change the way Charlotte deals with homelessness – is expected to be unveiled tonight as part of a Charlotte City Council vote to back the project with nearly $2 million in federal stimulus money.
Crafted to be a long-term solution rather than a quick fix, the program calls for pulling families and individuals from local shelters, putting them in rental apartments, and stabilizing their lives over 18 months with education, job skills, counseling and support from social workers and teams of volunteers.
The start-up plan calls for 100 families to be helped over the next three years. However, organizers predict hundreds more could be recruited if plans for another $2 million in stimulus money from the state fall into place in the coming months. Steps are also being finalized for a campaign to raise further money from local donors.
“It's a very exciting time,” says Roxianna Johnson, head of the Homeless Services Network, a coalition of 37 nonprofit, government and faith-based programs devoted to ending homelessness in Mecklenburg County.
“These dollars have created an opportunity to try things that we've talked about for years, things that we know work, but we never had the funding to implement on this kind of scale.”
The council will vote to contract with Crisis Assistance Ministry and the Workforce Initiative for Supportive Housing (WISH). Those groups will manage Project Hope on behalf of the Homeless Services Network. A small portion of the stimulus money will also go toward short-term homeless prevention, including help with rent.
How the participants will be chosen is still being worked out. But the goal is reaching the most vulnerable of the homeless.
“Lives will be changed,” says Carol Hardison, director of Crisis Assistance Ministry. “They'll move from the fear of sleeping in a car or on a cot, to having an opportunity for financial stability.”
The ultimate goal, she says, is to keep participants from returning to homelessness once their time in the program ends.
That is the basic philosophy of WISH, which has helped 70 homeless families (including 130 children) work toward financial stability since being launched 18 months ago.
Sarah Covington, 28, is among them – and an example of what WISH hopes to accomplish in Project Hope. She lost her job last year as a certified nurse's assistant and spent the winter in a homeless shelter with her daughter. WISH found her a home, helped her find a job, and gave her a chance to enroll in college to become a registered nurse.
Better still, she says, the program showed her how to save for a down payment on a car, eliminating six hours a day riding the bus to work and school.
“If I keep working hard, everything is going to come through for me,” she says. “I was at a low point, worrying about where my child would lay her head at night. But I was truly blessed to get into this program.”
The Salvation Army's Center of Hope, a homeless shelter near uptown, will direct families and individuals to Project Hope. Center director Deronda Metz has already identified a few dozen families that she hopes will qualify. The center currently has 310 women and children, some of whom have been homeless for more than a year.
“We had a resident meeting on Wednesday and I grabbed the mic and I surprised them with the news on Project Hope, and they cheered and applauded,” said Metz. “One lady started crying. She said, ‘I didn't think anybody was listening.'”
Organizers say one of the most innovative parts of the project is the partnerships from all segments of the community. In addition to Crisis Assistance and WISH, Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services will assign three social workers to the project, more if the additional money comes through. The nonprofit Foundation for the Carolinas has worked behind the scenes to organize regular meetings of the partners.
Also key is an endorsement by the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association, which is encouraging apartment companies to participate on a case-by-case basis.
WISH Director Darren Ash believes a key to the program's success will be in matching homeless people with teams of volunteers.
“Social workers are there to lay out a path and hold people accountable, but what creates significant change is … when these families bond with people who have a different past,” Ash says. “They break away from other role models to a new set of role models.
“One of the biggest gifts Charlotte has is a sense of volunteerism, and this is a model that takes advantage of that.”
