Homelessness Diversion and Prevention
Diverting and preventing families from becoming homeless in the first place.
With more than 40% of Americans a $400 expense away from financial distress, the threat of crisis looms closely for too many families. Preventing families from spiraling into homelessness is an essential part of the Family Promise mission.
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Here in Skagit County, we are in a housing crisis. With less than 1% vacancy rate once someone loses their housing, even with income that exceeds 3 times the cost to move in it is hard to find housing.
PROACTIVE SOLUTIONS
In 2016 Family Promise worked with our national partnership with Help Us Move In (HUMI) to begin forming our prevention program that allows us to help families stay in their housing. We work with local school districts, landlord, non-profits, and churches to identify families that need our services.
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This program is what we consider a landlord relationship program. We speak with the tenants landlord to learn more about the tenant. Many landlords we work with know their tenants and truly care for them. They don't want to have to evict families with children because of a one time set back. So we ask landlords to use us as a resource to help families get back on track and to help them feel more comfortable taking risks to support the families in our community.
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Through the Pandemic, we have grown these services to include 90 days of case management. This includes goal setting, financial literacy, housing counseling and career advancement counseling when needed. We are growing our staff to ensure that our Prevention clients are provided the same quality services that our housing guests receive.