Valley housing program delivered from debt

The LC Valley Youth Resource Center recently got the best birthday present founder Michelle King could ever imagine: the gift of being debt-free.

This summer the Idaho Housing and Finance Association paid off the $375,000 the center owed on its 17th Street facility in Lewiston, allowing the shelter for local displaced youth to focus on its operations.

“For the Youth Resource Center to be debt-free is a huge milestone,” said a giddy King, who founded the center with her husband, Ed King. “It’s so exciting because that means every donation we receive, now 100 percent goes to fund services for our guests.”

With 16 at-risk kids between the ages of 12 and 17 housed at the center at any given time, expenses add up quickly. For example, they consume two gallons of milk per day. Groceries add up to about $4,000 per month. And there has to be full-time supervision from an adult, even when the kids are asleep.

“You put 16 teenagers in the same space, you need an adult awake through the night,” King said.

And speaking of those operational costs, King said she just learned Tuesday morning of a nice layer of icing on the center’s birthday cake in the form of an additional $100,000 grant from the Idaho Housing and Finance Association to fund day-to-day operations. The funding came from the association’s allotment from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Emergency Solutions Grants in the 2020 CARES Act.

Brady Ellis, the association’s vice president of housing support programs, was in Lewiston Tuesday to check in with King, meet the center’s board of directors and get a first-hand look at the services it provides to local youth. He said the association has been reserving some of its revenue over the last several years to support homelessness initiatives, and was looking for opportunities when King contacted him.

“It was great timing on her part because we had been looking for some projects to do some community reinvestment,” Ellis said. “It all made perfect sense to us. Lewiston was an area we wanted to target with some of our investment dollars, and youth were also a target. All the stars really aligned for this project to really come together.”

Even though the association is lifting a heavy financial burden from the center, Ellis emphasized that the Kings, the center’s board, its employees and its network of local supporters have done the actual heavy lifting of creating the center and getting through its first year.

The city of Lewiston helped the center get off the ground last year with a $150,000 Community Development Block Grant that served as a down payment to the Stoffer family estate, which owned the building. King was effusive in her praise for the family members, who sold the building directly to the center because of their belief in the project.

“We were brand new,” King said of the Stoffers’ leap of faith. “And people like to fund things that already exist and have a track record. So the Stoffer family allowing us to make payments without credit was huge. It was miraculous, quite honestly.”

But after a year, the center is building an impressive record. According to King, it has served 122 kids, with a total of 440 nights of shelter. The only requirement for kids who need a place to stay, either for a few hours or several nights, is that they continue their education.

“You go to school, we’ll cover food, a safe place, school supplies, anything you need,” she said. “We’ll make sure you’ve got it. But you have to go to school.”

And they’re seeing vast improvements in kids who have finally been able to find some stability by escaping bad environments, King added.

“Most of our guests live in the next 15 minutes, because that’s the longest they could see ahead,” she said. “We now have guests who are planning weeks, months and even years into the future. And that is a sign of healing. It is super exciting.”

Then there are the socks. It’s tough enough for anyone to keep track of a pair of socks, King said, but it can be especially challenging for a kid who sleeps in a different place every night. Kids often show up with holey socks, one sock, or even no socks. And the easiest way to get them to put on a new pair is inviting them to the Sock Sliding Olympics across the center’s slick floor.

“And that only works if your socks aren’t sticky and don’t have holes,” she said. “It’s just pure joy and a lot of fun. And it means everybody is safe and has good socks.”

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or at (208) 310-1901, ext. 2266.