Family Homelessness

Guest Post: One Night in a Car, Our Family’s Story

Watching her child and grandchildren struggle with homelessness drove Diane to action. Read about their experiences and how Diane created a fantastic advocacy event scheduled for Aug. 22-23 in Pierce County.

Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry's Faith & Family Homelessness Project

Diane is a devoted wife, mother of two daughters and grandmother of three. She and her husband are entrepreneurs and have owned their own business for over 30 years. Diane has participated in 60-mile cancer walks, Kiwanis, Lions, and has volunteered with St Jude’s and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She is a passionate advocate for better programs to prevent and eliminate family homelessness.

This is her family’s story.

One Night in a Car

Over the past year I’ve dreamt of being involved in an event where others can learn what it is like, just for one night, to sleep in your car. If nothing else, the event would increase community awareness around the many children who call the family car home. These kids wake up in their car and head off to school to return to a car that may or may not be in the same place. My family has…

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July 3, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family HomelessnessTags: Faith and Family Homelessness Project, homeless advocacy, Pierce County, vehicle residency, volunteer Leave a comment

“Just A Chapter In My Life”: Tacoma Mom Previews StoryCorps for News-Tribune

Tacoma mom Jordan Kemper says that being homeless with her kids “was a chapter in my life; it doesn’t define me.” She talked to News Tribune columnist Larry LaRue about why she’ll be sharing her experiences with StoryCorps later this month. Read the column below.

To find out how you can share your story in King, Pierce or Snohomish counties this summer, contact findingourway@storycorps.org or call us at 206/398-4457.

Read more about the project here.

Larry LaRue: The homeless have their stories — and now they can tell them

BY LARRY LARUE

Staff writer, Tacoma News Tribune

July 1, 2014

July 3, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Events, Family Homelessness, JournalismTags: Gates Foundation, homeless advocacy, Pierce County, StoryCorps, volunteer Leave a comment

Hack to End Homelessness: Tiana’s Take (New Video)

What was the role of Seattle University faculty, students and staff in the Hack to End Homelessness? They were planners, community liaisons, hackers and volunteers. This awesome new video by our project assistant, Tiana Quitugua, tells the stories of the many folks in red at the Hackathon.

Tiana is one of the stellar Seattle U students graduating this weekend, and this is one of her final projects for us. Thank you, Tiana, for capturing this experience and telling it from the SU perspective, and for all your great work for us.

For more about the Hackathon, read our recap.

June 13, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family Homelessness, Films about HomelessnessTags: Faith and Family Homelessness Project, Firesteel, Gates Foundation, Hack to End Homelessness, homeless advocacy, Seattle U students, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, YWCA 4 Comments

StoryCorps and Gates Foundation Launch “Finding Our Way” Project

NOTE: This blog post is about our StoryCorps project launch. For more recent information, see our StoryCorps page.

StoryCorps Tierra Jackson John Horan — One of the most memorable StoryCorps segments for the family homelessness community is the story of Tierra Jackson, who with her former principal John Horan reflected on what it was like to be homeless in high school. Photo credit: StoryCorps.

Every Friday morning at around 7:30 a.m., millions of people around the country are entranced by a weekly public radio segment in which everyday Americans tell the stories of their lives. It’s the beloved StoryCorps, and it’s coming to our region in summer 2014 to find stories about families who have experienced homelessness.

While only about 50 of its stories per year make it onto National Public Radio, StoryCorps has actually recorded more than 50,000 stories in its 10 years. The stories are archived in the Library of Congress.

This July and August, people in Western Washington who have experienced family homelessness will be able to tell their own stories as part of the new StoryCorps project, “Finding Our Way: Puget Sound Stories about Family Homelessness.” The project is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who asked our Project on Family Homelessness to serve as the local coordinator.

We’ll be working with local host partners to find stories from among their current and recent clients, and also reaching out to the public to find people who have experienced family homelessness in their past. The stories will also be available for our advocacy efforts to end family homelessness in Washington state.

Find out how service providers can help us find the stories and use them to advocate. Got a story? Click to jump to the details.

How can stories help end family homelessness? Firesteel explains.
Read the news release about the project.

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June 9, 2014July 14, 2016 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family HomelessnessTags: Catholic Community Services, Firesteel, Gates Foundation, homeless advocacy, King County, Pierce County, Seattle U students, Snohomish County, StoryCorps, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, YWCA 9 Comments

2014 Conference on Ending Homelessness, Yakima, WA

Written by Graham Pruss, Project Coordinator, Seattle University’s Project on Family Homelessness

red lion hotel restaurant and lounge billboard welcome ending homelessness — The Red Lion Welcomes Ending Homelessness

On May 21 and 22, 2014, Yakima hosted the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance’s 24th Annual Conference on Ending Homelessness, a dynamic combination of speakers and workgroups attended by more than 600 service providers, non-profit organizers and advocates for low-income people. I attended the Conference with colleagues from Seattle University’s Project on Family Homelessness, and because of my own research around income inequality, direct outreach, vehicle residency, advocacy and service provision. This was my second year at the CoEH and my first not presenting, allowing the time and lack of pressure to appreciate the Conference fully. I was looking forward to participating in workshops such as “Does Class Matter In Homeless Advocacy?,” “Reduction In Federal Affordable Housing Funding & The Re-Emergence Of Contemporary Homelessness,” and “Finding The Forgotten: Engaging The Chronically Homeless.”

Alan Peterson, managing director of Real Change on Class in Homeless Advocac — Alan Preston, managing director of Real Change, on “Class in Homeless Advocacy”

I arrived at the Conference excited to see friends, colleagues and acquaintances from throughout Washington state. After lunch, we broke into workshops prepared by the Conference – all were very well organized, with clear goals and information to take home and follow up on. In particular, Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) Executive Director Paul Boden’s presentation on the “Reduction in Federal Affordable Housing Funding” was an eye-opening experience for the packed room. Boden spent an hour and a half frenetically describing the effect of reallocating housing funding from established U.S. community cornerstones such as the departments of Veterans Administration (VA) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to general “homeless” services such as the current McKinney-Vento federally funded programs. On this, Boden remarked, “The impact of de-funding housing was that ‘poor’ people became ‘homeless’ people. But, they’re still people. Housing, health care and education are not homeless issues, they are social justice issues.”

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May 29, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family Homelessness, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Seattle International Film Festival “American Refugees” Premiere (Haley’s Recap)

Seattle University, four animated shorts, and a determination to change the way people see family homelessness

Written by Haley Jo Lewis, Student Project Assistant for the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness

Seattle University: empowering leaders for a just and humane world. But what does that really look like?

It was a sold-out show on May 19 at the Harvard Exit theatre. While a sold-out show is not necessarily unusual, the content of the films made it remarkable. The films, titled collectively as American Refugees, are four animated shorts that tell the stories of families, homelessness and their resilience against all odds.

siff harvard exit theatre — Marquee at the Harvard Exit theatre. Photo by Steve Schimmelman.

Seattle University’s Film and Family Homelessness Project had recruited five professional filmmakers to create these films. Seattle University students were involved throughout the process — assisting the filmmakers as Student Fellows, helping to develop discussion guides, designing collateral and finally, volunteering at the event itself.

Continue reading →

May 27, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family Homelessness, Films about HomelessnessTags: American Refugees, Animated Films, Film and Family Homelessness Project, Firesteel, Home for Sale, homeless advocacy, homelessness films, Seattle U students, SIFF, Super Dads, The Beast Inside, The Smiths, YWCA 6 Comments

New Films on Family Homelessness Premiered, Available for Download

Our sister program, the Film & Family Homelessness Project, has created four new animated short films about real families, homelessness and resilience.

“American Refugees” premiered to great acclaim last night, and now you can watch these remarkable films online at http://www.americanrefugees.org.

Visit our Facebook page to see photos from the Firesteel green screen booth and photos from the screening and after-party.

Then, watch the films and share them with your friends, family, colleagues, church, school group — anyone who needs to hear about how important it is to end homelessness among families. Download a discussion guide too!

May 20, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Family Homelessness, Films about Homelessness, Youth PovertyTags: American Refugees, Animated Films, Film and Family Homelessness Project, Firesteel, Home for Sale, homeless advocacy, homelessness films, Super Dads, The Beast Inside, The Smiths 1 Comment

Mark Horvath Hacking to End Homelessness: May 1-4, 2014 (Haley’s View)

Written by Haley Jo Lewis, Student Project Assistant, Seattle University’s Project on Family Homelessness

After months of working with Seattle University’s Project on Family Homeless, I knew just how influential Mark Horvath is in efforts being made to end homelessness. His passion and energy are contagious, even through the computer screen. I was eager to meet the man behind the film @home and the Invisible People movement.

On May 1, partners from the three Seattle University projects on family homelessness welcomed e-activist Mark Horvath (@hardlynormal) to Seattle. We had invited Mark to join our partners at Impact Hub and Hack to End Homelessness (@hack2end) to motivate and educate Hackathon participants on homelessness and its solutions. After watching the documentary about his work, @home, multiple times and following his passionate work on Twitter and Youtube, I was anxious and excited to meet Mark.

Mark’s work could be said to manifest in the documentary @home. This new film followed Mark on a cross-country journey as he talked with homeless people and filmed their stories to share with the world. Read my reaction on Firesteel to this moving, inspiring, and beautiful documentary.

Not only had I written a blog post in reaction to @home, but I had also created some art inspired by his film. I was excited to meet the man behind the camera, and to give him the art I had created for it.

mark horvath haley lewis twitter drawing @home film — I (@peopleneedhomes) tweet a photo to Mark of one of the drawings I did for him a few days before our meeting.

Mark was kind, compassionate, and grateful. I knew from the get-go that Mark was a storyteller, but in person it was a whole different ball game. Every story he told was captivating, and when he spoke, people listened. There is something about the way Mark tells stories that is especially moving. Once homeless himself, Mark is dedicated to his work in ways that other people aren’t. Mark’s vulnerability and closeness to the issue is what makes his stories so powerful and moving.

Continue reading →

May 13, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family Homelessness, Films about HomelessnessTags: @hardlynormal, @home, Firesteel, Hack to End Homelessness, homeless advocacy, homelessness films, Mark Horvath, Seattle U students, Storify 3 Comments

Tech & Nonprofits Collaborate for Hack to End Homelessness, May 1-4

We built a community empowered by technology & design thinking

to solve the problem of homelessness together.

– Candace Faber, Hackathon Project Manager

At Seattle’s first-ever Hack to End Homelessness, May 3-4 at the Impact Hub, more than 60 technologists, graphic designers and storytellers worked side by side with nonprofit service providers and advocacy organizations. The purpose of the weekend was to build technology tools that the nonprofits can use for service and advocacy.

Hackathon participants working Michael Maine — During the Hackathon, teams worked together for 36+ hours building projects. Photo by Michael B. Maine.

Our project served as the community liaison, connecting the Hackathon organizers to the dozen community partners. This video describes how Seattle U students, faculty and staff participated — as organizers, volunteers and even hackers.

There were 12 teams of 3-7 people each, plus three additional people who floated. One team worked through the night to create an intake interface for YouthCare that will help them place homeless youth in shelters. Another generated incredible insights on our city’s homeless population and their reasons for remaining unsheltered, based on data collected earlier in the week at United Way’s Community Resource Exchange at CenturyLink Field.

Continue reading →

May 7, 2014February 4, 2019 by phungamy Categories: Collaboration, Events, Family Homelessness, Films about HomelessnessTags: @hardlynormal, @home, CEHKC, Hack to End Homelessness, homeless advocacy, Impact Hub, Mark Horvath, Seattle U students, Storify 10 Comments

“@home,” Mark Horvath and Three Wishes for Solving Homelessness

The many faces of Mark Horvath and his good friend, social media, as shown in the new film “@home.” Original art by Haley Jo Lewis.

Written by Haley Jo Lewis, Seattle University communications major and project assistant, Seattle University’s Project on Family Homelessness. Originally posted at www.FiresteelWA.org

If you had three wishes, what would they be?

Would you even think to wish for a home? Maybe a bigger one, perhaps, if you already have one.

While interviewing people who are homeless, social media pioneer and homelessness advocate Mark Horvath always ends his conversations with a question: “If you had three wishes, what would they be?”

In the new documentary about him, “@home,” the people Mark interviews, without fail, wish for a home.

April 25, 2014 by phungamy Categories: Family Homelessness, JournalismTags: @home, Firesteel, homeless advocacy, homelessness films, Mark Horvath, Seattle U students, YWCA 2 Comments