The Haven is open daily with breakfast, laundry, showers, personal box, living room area, computers and works with several agencies and programs to connect guests to the resources they need to find housing and stabilize their lives. The Haven offers housing support and assistance through Housing First programs. Guests are eligible for rental assistance if: they are at risk of needing to stay in a shelter within the next 14 days, OR are literally homeless (living on the street, in an emergency shelter, in a vehicle, or another place not intended for habitation).

Building Goodness Foundation (BGF) builds for nonprofits which work to improve health, education, and economic outcomes in impoverished communities, both in the U.S. and abroad. These nonprofit partners receive a custom-built facility or renovation which boosts their ability to serve their community, at lower than market cost. BGF builds to improve shelters from locally Barrett Early Learning Center to 900 families in Haiti who now have a home when they were formerly homeless or living in a tent. This also includes 35,400 patients each year who are seen at BGF-built medical clinics and  1,977 students each year who  attend a BGF-built school.

Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build and rebuild homes and communities while catalyzing new pathways to safe, decent, affordable housing. There is the construction where the individual  or family who will benefit work on building their own houses as well as other houses and in the end have no interest mortgage loans and there is the building of community for a new neighborhood. Westminster has been involved for many years In constructing homes and in the last year also in building relationships between people who will be living together in a neighborhood. Future neighbors are bought together for meals and play to build relationships and a strong sustainable neighborhood.

Piedmont Housing Alliance creates affordable housing opportunities and fosters community through education, lending, and equitable development. Their education efforts focus on counseling for home ownership and to build family financial stability. This includes HUD-approved housing counseling program of one-on-one coaching  and group classes for home buying, credit improvement, debt reduction, savings programs, fair housing and foreclosure prevention. Lending to help individual homebuyers with down payment and closing cost assistance and for affordable housing development projects throughout the city and five counties of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District. They also acquire and rehabilitate and/or renovate existing properties and develop new affordable rental housing, which they often manage, and produce affordable single family housing through neighborhood revitalization efforts.

We are looking forward to this opportunity to explore the providing of shelter in our community where we know it is very difficult, pricey, and there is little vacancy.

Respectfully submitted,
Kobby Hoffman on behalf of the Benevolence Committee