Family Promise celebrates a decade of service

As Family Promise of the Palouse celebrates its 10-year anniversary this week, the nonprofit is embarking on a plan to provide transitional housing for families in Moscow and Pullman.

“It is becoming more difficult for people who have been in our shelter program to then find affordable housing,” said Bruce Pitman, president of Family Promise’s board of directors.

The difficulty stems from vacancy rates decreasing while rent prices are increasing, he said.

That is why Family Promise wants to provide duplexes for families that are successful in the nonprofit’s shelter program. The plan is for families to live in these homes anywhere from six months to a year so they can begin paying rent and build up their credit rating, Pitman said. This will put them in a stronger position to acquire permanent housing.

Family Promise Executive Director Autumn Shafer said most families in the shelter program became homeless because of eviction or not being able to pay their rent, which can prohibit them from finding new homes.

“The largest barrier for most of our families to find housing is their rental history and credit history,” she said.

Transition housing — or “bridge” housing as Family Promise labels it — can give families the opportunity to improve their rental history and allow them to pay off their past rent balance, Shafer said.

Pitman said Family Promise will begin a capital campaign with the hope of raising enough money to create the bridge housing in 2024.

Bridge housing is the next step in Family Promise’s decade-long mission to help families that are homeless or on the verge of homelessness.

A poverty study from the League of Women Voters and the efforts of former Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney a decade ago led to discussions about bringing the national nonprofit to the Palouse.

Family Promise of the Palouse partners with churches in Pullman, Moscow and the surrounding area to offer overnight shelter to families.

During the daytime, those families can come to the Family Promise facility that is located in a building owned by Gritman Medical Center on West Palouse River Drive in Moscow. There they can meet with case managers, do their laundry, find clothing and use the kitchen

“This kind of gives them home base,” Pitman said. “This is their daytime home.”

Shafer said Family Promise also provides prevention services to help families avoid homelessness.

“We can assist families with case management and financial support to not be evicted from their home,” she said.

The nonprofit can also put them up in a hotel temporarily while they wait to start a new lease in an apartment or home.

In the last three years, thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit has seen a great increase in the number of people needing its prevention services, Shafer said.

From 2018 to 2020, Shafer said six families accessed that program. In the past two years, that number has jumped to 54 families.

More families have needed the nonprofit’s shelter program, too, Shafer said.

In 2019, five families were living in a shelter.

“In 2020 we had 14 and it’s stayed pretty steady since then,” she said.

In total, 117 families have taken part in the nonprofit’s shelter program since 2013, according to Family Promise’s data. Of those families, 75% have moved on to permanent housing. Sixty families have used Family Promise’s prevention services during that time.

While these may be big numbers, Pitman said most homeless families remain invisible to the general public, even though their children attend local schools.

They often resort to living in their cars or with family members, and are not often seen asking for money in parking lots.

They are trying to resolve their issues on their own, he said, and they are determined to change their circumstances.

“They tend to be highly motivated to improve their situation because of their children,” he said. “They feel this obligation to create an environment that’s more stable and more healthy for these kids.”

Pitman said it is Family Promise’s goal to help them.

“Quite simply our mission is to help homeless families secure sustainable housing,” he said.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.