- Good afternoon, everyone. Is this on? Can you hear me okay? All right, perfect. Welcome to, good afternoon.
- Welcome to our weekly service celebration. My name is Tracy Yovanovich and I'm honored to serve as your
- president. Please silence your electronic devices. And today, I've got to get my little clicker. Today
- for Where in the World. There we go. Oh, I must've skipped right over it.
- There we go. Today for Where in the World, we're honoring Shane Gibson. I know he was just here. So
- Shane and Taji went on a trip this summer into Jamaica as well as Mexico, and he found rotary signs
- in Ocho Rios. So I thought for the Where in the World segment today, we would talk about Ocho Rios.
- And they have between 1915 and 1930 during the American administration of Haiti, some Rotarian Marines
- used to meet every week in Jeremy, Jamaica. About 1930, a Rotary Club was projected and started
- in Port-au-Prince, but never chartered. The records of Rotary International indicate that Rotary within
- the islands of the Caribbean began with what was called non-district clubs.
- The first non-district club to receive a charter was the Rotary Club of St. Thomas in 1957, followed
- by the Rotary Club of St. Croix in 1958, and by the Rotary Club of Kingston in 1959. Rotary International
- continued to charter non-district clubs until 1973, and there were about 41 clubs at that point.
- In June of 1973, the first Caribbean convention of non-district clubs was held in St. Kitts, and one
- of the outcomes of that convention was a petition to Rotary International for the establishment of a
- district for the clubs of the Caribbean. It was approved and established in 1974 as District 404.
- All the French, Dutch, and English-speaking islands in the Caribbean diaspora were included, and Dr.
- John Watts of Grenada became the first district governor of that district. So I thought that was very
- interesting for us to learn about some of the 200-plus countries that participate in Rotary International.
- And with that, I would like to invite Emily Herman up to do our reflection.
- Hi, everyone. So my name is Emily Herman. I work at the Community Foundation of Bloomington Monroe County.
- And I would just invite you to reflect on a moment where you had a wonderful, genuine, and thoughtful
- conversation with somebody brand new. Maybe it was at Rotary or at a different event, over coffee, anywhere,
- and truly with anyone. What made it memorable?
- Most likely, it wasn't because you had every single thing in common or you had all the right answers
- when chatting with them. At my work with fundraising, it's really important to build meaningful and
- genuine relationships. And a fundraising term or concept sometimes we discuss is becoming a curious
- chameleon. So curious chameleon, that doesn't mean adapt and change completely who you are depending
- on who you're talking to.
- If somebody came up to me and said oh my gosh I love golf and I said me too but I don't know the difference
- between a birdie and a par I think that would probably not go far. All I would say is that I really
- enjoy driving the golf cart so with that the way to really do it is to adapt the conversation and really
- leaning in asking you know.
- What made you enjoy golf? I myself am not really familiar. Could you tell me more? So that's where curiosity
- and adapting comes into play. And that's where it can really open the door to making somebody feel heard
- and listened to and valued. So as a reflection, I just invite you to just lean into curiosity, become
- your best chameleon, and have wonderful and meaningful new connections to have these longstanding
- relationships. Thanks all.
- And I don't think Heidi is able to make it, so I will introduce our guests. First of all, we welcome
- Steve Bishop, who is a guest of Liz Irwin. It's good to see you again, Steve. Brian Hayne from a Bloomington
- North Rotary Club. And our next guest didn't want to be introduced, but I'm going to pull the plus daughter
- card. And we have Sue Schindel here as a guest of Winston. And then lastly, Carter Herman, Emily's husband is here.
- So nice to have all these guests. Anyone online, Joy? Joy's in the breakout room. I hope she's able
- to come back. No, no worries. All right. And with that, if you could put the slides up, Tyler, we're
- double working you here. We'll go through the birthdays and anniversaries. There we go.
- So we have, for our birthdays, we have quite a few this week. Dakir Abdullah's 28th, Claudia Abey-Nada,
- the 27th, it's her big 60, and she is home in Columbia celebrating. Diana Hoffman on the 24th,
- Matt Molina, the 23rd, Bill Oates on the 24th, Leanne Ratliff, the 25th, Suze Gamblieri, the 27th, and
- Winston Schindel on the 29th. So it was a very productive week, I would say. And for anniversaries,
- we have Byron Banger, 41 years.
- unbelievable. Len Tiemann at nine years and Tyler has been with us for four years. It can't believe
- four years have already flown by. All right. And so for announcements, there we go. Um, I wanted, since
- we're in the Franjapani room, I wanted to share with everyone, I actually saw Franjapani trees for the
- first time in my life in Bali. So that was pretty exciting.
- Also, we have no one who signed up yet for reflections in September, other than the first. Thank you,
- Carol Anne for signing up. So we do have some open slots. There will be a link on the roundabout where
- you go in and signed up.
- to do reflections. And then last and late, but coming in on your tables, you've got flyers for the rotary
- toast. And it would be great if we all worked together to buy tables together rather than calling in
- and saying, hey, can you seat me with so-and-so? Because Lynn's going to be doing the seating. And I
- can tell you from experience from last year, it's very challenging to accommodate all the requests.
- So if you buy tables, get together and buy a table in advance, it not only helps the toast
- Foundation itself, but it also makes it easier for Lynn. And Lynn, just wave, you want to be easier.
- It makes it easier for her in the seating. So I encourage everyone, it's going to be a great program.
- We're honoring Lori Burns McRobbie and look forward to everyone being a participant in that.
- And then lastly, it's not going, let's try it again. We got a note from our global scholar,
- Christian Gray, he is off to Amsterdam. I thought I would share with everyone so that you could see
- how excited he is. He said he was skipping, literally skipping, going to the airport. So you can imagine
- the enthusiasm that he has for going to start his program as a Rotary Scholar. All right, with that,
- I think we have time for Happy Dollars, Mr. Michael.
- And by the way, Happy Dollars are going to Teacher's Warehouse. Today is my big sister's 70th birthday,
- so I'm celebrating Jan Schwartzberg in Ithaca, New York. Do we have any other happy people out there?
- Okay, here's 20, and it's my 59th wedding anniversary was last week, and both of my children's birthday
- were last week. Wow, that's awesome. And Joy, do we have any happy dollars online? Well, I don't see
- any happy dollars. I think we're happy people, but I don't see any happy dollars. All right, anyone
- else out in the audience? Oh, I see Brian.
- Um, my eldest daughter actually was going to be earning her life rank, um, tonight. So very happy with
- that. She'll work on her Eagle next. That's awesome. All right. And I see here's Tony happy dollars.
- I, my wife and I have been very fortunate this year. We live in a very low lying area. It's in the Griffey
- Valley and a property joins Griffey nature preserve Griffey. Griffey Creek is closer than
- For me, well, for me, the door behind me. We did not get flooded. With all this going on around Indiana,
- I had friends that had trees on their house and friends lost their house, but we were spared. So I'm
- just very, very fortunate because we haven't been flooded before. Last time we were flooded, I was here,
- my wife wanted screen doors on the house. And when Martin's Hill got flooded, we got flooded. So anyway,
- I'm very grateful.
- And then I'm going to do a $20 Happy Dollars. I took our youngest son, Luca, who's 20, to see Garth
- Brooks, because I'm the only one in my family that loves country and Western. And he, of course,
- had no idea. He knows who Garth is, but he's never heard his music. And when we left, he said that it
- was the best performance he's ever seen. He couldn't believe he'd never been to a concert where every
- single person in the audience sang along and knew all the songs. I was like, expose him to do a different
- thing so kids can be trained.
- Anyone else, happy dollars. All right, with that, I will invite Forrest Givmore to come up and introduce
- our guest. Good people.
- Get ready for something special. Emily Pike is our guest speaker today. And I've been a close friend
- of Emily's for over 15 years. So this is a particularly special opportunity to introduce her. Emily
- is a native Hoosier born and raised here in our beloved state of Indiana. She is a graduate of both
- Notre Dame
- and the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University right here. She also
- is a veteran of the Peace Corps, serving her time in Togo in West Africa. It's hard to believe, but
- there was a time in our community, when in our community here in Bloomington, we did not have a shelter
- for homeless families. That there was a time when this didn't exist. It was a service that wasn't,
- wasn't part of our community. And while many people, many people are responsible for its founding and
- its success, I think I can safely say that Emily is perhaps most responsible for making new hope for
- families into the thriving epicenter of community resources for homeless families it has become.
- really remarkable work that she's done. She began work there in 2012 and founded New Hope's children's
- program in 2013. And I remember back then when many voices struggled to understand Emily's vision for
- the children's program at New Hope. But it has become very clear that Emily was just ahead of her time.
- as the shelter and the childcare program now work together so seamlessly that we could not imagine them
- apart. Becoming New Hope's executive director in 2017, she has built an essential institution for fighting
- family homelessness that is both strong and effective.
- She also gives so freely of her knowledge and time as the chair of our regional council, ushering Monroe
- and the five other counties in our area into a collaborative approach to ending homelessness far greater
- than we've ever seen before. I also can't fail to mention that she is the adoring mom of two wonderful,
- beautiful children, Lainey Inbert, who I've come to love very much.
- Buckle your seatbelts for a great ride. I give to you Emily Pike. Well, I got to say, I don't know if
- I can live up to that hype, y'all. That is not the introduction I sent over. Thank you, Forrest. It
- is such a delight to be here. It is such a delight to be with all of you.
- I have spoken with this group before. And I think the last time I spoke with y'all, we were building
- a new building. So spoiler alert, we built it. And a lot of y'all were part of that. So I'm here to
- tell you a little bit about what we're up to now. Did you know that in the United States, you're more
- likely to be homeless in the first year of your life than at any other time? That's surprising to a
- lot of people. That comes straight from HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
- I promised Michael that I wouldn't be reading these slides out loud to you, but I just want to draw
- your attention to these captions down here. None of the photos in this slide deck today are stock photos.
- These are all families that were actually served by New Hope in the past few years. And if you want
- to read along, you can hear some of the stories or read some of the stories of the people that we serve
- at New Hope. The added financial stress of a baby
- The physical and mental health challenges that can come from giving birth, that can come from caring
- for a newborn, that can come from those of you with children may recall many sleepless nights, many
- ear infections, those sorts of things, not only can lead to physical and mental health problems for
- parents, but also can cause families to miss work. Many women miss work in the last trimester of their
- pregnancy.
- And of course, finding childcare after a child is born is very difficult. And all of those things together
- can lead to housing instability. We also know that, unfortunately, the birth of a child is a primary
- driver of domestic violence. And domestic violence is a primary driver of family homelessness. Oftentimes,
- when we think about homelessness,
- what we tend to think about are people that we see in the park. They are people that we see maybe with
- a shopping cart, people with perhaps an obvious mental health problem. And those people are out there
- for sure. And they need our help and they're deserving of our help. And they actually make up a minority
- of people experiencing homelessness, those chronic folks. Families we don't tend to think about, right?
- Because we don't see them. And so we,
- either consciously or subconsciously, just sort of assume that there must not be that many of them.
- But the truth is that 30 to 40% of people experiencing homelessness in our community every night are
- families with children. I wasn't sure whether to include this slide. I don't know if you guys can read
- it or not. But what it tells us is that 1.2 million children in the United States experience homelessness
- each year. That is more children.
- than live in many U.S. states, right? So actually, childhood homelessness is remarkably prevalent. And
- this number is likely an undercount, right? In Indiana, we know for sure that more than 4,000 children
- each year experience literal homelessness, which is to say they slept outdoors, they slept in a shelter,
- they slept in a car, somewhere else that wasn't intended for human habitation. And in Monroe County alone,
- We see more than 200 children each year experiencing homelessness, and oftentimes more like 250. New
- hope is here. So in most of the country, when a family becomes homeless, they have to separate. There's
- a shelter for men, and there's a shelter for women and children. 15 years ago, some local leaders in
- this community, one of whom is sitting in front of me, decided that Bloomington shouldn't be one of
- those places.
- They decided that a family who became homeless in Bloomington in Monroe County should be able to stay
- together. And they decided that they wanted that to be the case regardless of family composition, regardless
- of marital status, and regardless of their faith, which is to say that new hope is founded on the principle
- that families stay together. And that means single moms, single dads, married couples, unmarried couples,
- same-sex couples, custodial grandparents, transgender folks,
- Anyone you can think of who has custody of a child and becomes homeless is welcome at New Hope for Families.
- And that's been true for 15 years. In 2015, as Forrest mentioned, we opened our early learning program.
- And we added that because we wanted to make sure that parents could get back to work
- and so that children could have the good start that they need and the good start that they deserve.
- A lot of times people don't necessarily understand how these two things go together. New Hope is remarkably
- successful at housing families experiencing homelessness. And we do that with an individualized plan
- for every family. But each of those individualized plans follows one basic template and it goes like
- this. Find childcare, find income, find a lease, right? Those are the three things you have to do.
- Everyone in our shelter has children. And everyone who has children, if you're going to work, is going
- to need child care, right? Anyone sent a kid to daycare recently? There you go. We got one back there.
- How much does daycare cost? Over $1,000 a month is accurate. Yes. And that's for a preschooler. If you
- wanted to send an infant to daycare, to a high quality daycare in this community, you'd be looking at
- something closer to
- not quite $20,000 a year, which is to say it's cheaper to send your kid to college at IU than to daycare
- at IU, right? And so it isn't surprising that that is a stumbling block for families when they're trying
- to achieve stability. We see it as a leading cause of family homelessness, a lack of childcare, and
- we see it as the number one thing that families need. More than half of the families in our shelter each year
- have a child who's too young for kindergarten, right? And that goes right along with that idea that
- you're more likely to be homeless in the first year of your life than at any other time. And so child
- care does two things for us, right? It gets parents back to work where they need to be, and it gets
- kids ready for kindergarten. Too often we see kids starting off behind in kindergarten. They're staying
- behind. Parents who are working two or three jobs simply don't have as much time to invest in enrichment
- activities.
- And so we opened an early learning program that we decided we wanted it to be excellent. We wanted it
- to be more than what I sometimes call child storage, right? So our early learning program is designed
- to meet these families where they are and to help them grow and learn and be ready for school on the
- very first day along with their peers. And I'll just say on a personal note,
- Another thing that this program does for us is it helps us maintain contact with these families for
- a longer period of time, which is something that New Hope has begun to do better at over the past several
- years. And a sort of even tertiary goal that we set for this when we began it was that maybe it could
- help to break down some of the stigma around homelessness, right? There is nothing more leveling than
- watching your kid play with another kid, right?
- Last summer, I had a birthday party for my kids at Bryant Park. We invited everyone in the class. My
- kids go to our school. We invited everyone in the class. And I will say, it is tremendously leveling
- to watch every single two-year-old there have the exact same meltdown because you gave them the wrong
- cupcake. Turns out it doesn't matter what your income level is. You wanted the bluey one, OK? Everyone
- wanted that one.
- And that's one of the things that helps us meet the needs of the community. So for 15 years, we've been
- doing that. Over here, you will see the very first house. It's not there anymore. It will soon be part
- of the wealth. It is now in the great house farm in the sky. But it is on the Hopewell property. But
- that is where Sushindel and her friends
- started a shelter in 2011. A lot of you guys have been knowing about New Hope that whole time. But for
- some of you, it's newer. In 2011, we were serving just three families at a time in our shelter. And
- I will say this is today the 25th. Yeah. So three days ago, we celebrated 15 years since the first family
- at New Hope moved out into stable housing.
- Since that time, so that was one family 15 years ago, since that time, we have sheltered more than 500
- families at New Hope. Yeah, right. Which is kind of remarkable when you think about where we started.
- I used to love to show people this house because it had like, it was all renovated with volunteer labor,
- right? And so there was one spot where if you like stepped on a floorboard, you could sort of feel your
- body headed for the basement.
- There were, it was, but it was this tremendous labor of love from this community that decided that our
- values say, this isn't a place where families have to sleep outside. We now have a property that we
- opened in 2022. That's an early learning center for up to 60 young children and a shelter for 12 families
- each night. And that is something that
- I have to say feels remarkable. One of the things that I've heard my friend Forest Gilmore say a lot
- of times is that we as leaders often overestimate what we can get done in a year. But we underestimate
- what we might be able to get done in five years or 10 years. And I think 10 years ago, this wouldn't
- have seemed possible for this community. And it's just here now. So we don't have to wonder anymore,
- which is pretty remarkable to me.
- So by the numbers, each year New Hope shelters more than 50 families. And we serve more than 80 young
- children in early learning. One of the things I wanna say about this is that when we say that we shelter
- those families, what we mean is that either in hotels or in our shelter itself, we welcome those families
- in and then we offer them the supportive services they need to move through homelessness into lasting
- stability.
- We understand that homelessness is time limited for most people, right? Homelessness isn't an adjective
- that describes a person. Homelessness is an adjective that describes, or homeless, homelessness isn't
- an adjective at all. Homeless is an adjective that describes something that happened. And so when we
- welcome families in at New Hope, what we're trying to say is,
- Here, let's make a plan to help you move from point A to point B, and let's make sure that you are the
- architect of that plan. And in doing that, in moving to a housing first model over the past 15 years,
- what we've seen is that we are consistently able to house in a lease in their name that they can afford
- more than 80% of the families who stay at New Hope.
- So in the state of Indiana, about 32% of people who stay at homeless shelters move on into stable housing.
- Last year at New Hope, that number was 86%, which is an all-time honey for us. We're very proud of it.
- And that is a work in progress, right? But at the end of the day,
- You know, one of the things that our homeless response system in our community is committed to, and
- that's all of the sheltering providers together, is that we're not trying to fill up beds around here,
- right? We're trying to empty beds. And I think that's something that sets our homeless response system
- apart. We also, in recent years, have developed a very robust prevention and diversion program.
- that is in partnership with Heading Home of South Central Indiana with the Community Foundation. But
- essentially what that does is it tries to help us catch families before they experience literal homelessness.
- So we shelter 50 families each year, but more than 125 unique families, those are families who don't
- go into shelter, are served in prevention and diversion. For those families, 80 to 90% never experience
- homelessness, right? For those families, we're able to
- In particular, if they reach out to us more than two weeks before they're going to be evicted or before
- they're going to need to move, we're able to prevent that homelessness. And that's important for a couple
- of reasons, right? The number one indicator of the long-term impact of an episode of homelessness on
- a child is simply the duration of homelessness, right? So anytime we can, we wanna prevent homelessness.
- If we can't prevent it though, we wanna make it as brief as possible.
- And so in cases where we're not able to prevent homelessness, those families who've been working with
- us in prevention and diversion are in our shelter for a much shorter period of time. So even though
- they're not technically success stories from that perspective, they're dramatic success stories when
- you look at the length of time they're homeless. We had a family a couple of summers ago, a single mom
- and two little kids. She had to leave her home because of a domestic violence situation, brought her
- children with her. She works at a local hotel.
- They were able to stay there for a little bit, and then they ran out of money. New hope was full. So
- what we were able to do is take over her bill at that hotel, work with her boss to make sure that she
- could stay there. And within 11 days, that family was stably housed, right? Because we'd been working
- with her before that, and she had two little boys who were four and five. And I always like to say those
- little boys didn't know they were homeless, right? Those little boys are very sure that they were on vacation.
- Okay, what they said to me was we have a pool and we had donuts every morning, which is a pretty good
- life if you're four years old, you know, I gotta say I'm 42 and that sounds like pretty good life to
- me. So when we're able to prevent homelessness, that's fantastic. But when we're not, if we're able
- to make it more brief, that is something we're also looking for. And then the last thing that we have
- begun at New Hope in recent years, and this is almost three years now that we've begun to do ongoing
- case management for families,
- which is to say following an episode of homelessness, we have voluntary case management for a period
- of up to three years. And that was designed to help reduce recidivism. The number one risk factor for
- an episode of homelessness is any previous episode of homelessness, right? So sometimes I say homelessness
- is a little bit like a heart attack. If you've had one, it doesn't mean you're gonna have another, but
- it means you should be checking in with your cardiologist, right? And in this case, we're the cardiologist.
- Because what we're doing there is just checking. We're just going to see, how's it going? How's everyone's
- job going? What's going on? We also have a survey that we use to understand child well-being during
- that time to make sure that kids are thriving in the way that we think that they should. We think that
- they will. But those things together are the way that we are contributing to our community's mission
- to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-repeating, and in particular, to do that for families.
- In 2019, New Hope began making this commitment to our community, just to say that in our community,
- no child will sleep outside. Before that, we had a wait list, like everybody else, and if we were full,
- we had to say, I'm very sorry, here's a list of places you can try. But for seven and a half years now,
- we have been able, in partnership with this community, to uphold this promise. To my knowledge, this
- is unique in the state of Indiana.
- And I want to say, as I wrap up, that that's not because of New Hope. Well, it is because of New Hope,
- but it's because of the values of this community, right? It's because of the people of this community.
- It was local leaders of this community who decided we needed a New Hope, right? And most communities
- don't have one. We have one because some local people said we should, and then everybody said we should
- continue to.
- Everybody said we should continue to grow it. Everyone said together, yes, we will uphold this promise.
- And for that reason, we're pretty sure that we don't have any kids sleeping outside tonight. And that's
- not just New Hope. That's a partnership with the police department. It's a partnership with DCS. It's
- a partnership with every single agency in this community that has street outreach workers. It's a partnership
- with hundreds of people who share their time and their resources and their talents.
- because we can't uphold that promise on our own. It's something that we have to do as a community. And
- you guys have all been a part of that. And thank you so much for inviting me to share a little bit more
- about it today. Thank you. What you got, Zodi?
- about sort of the situation. This is kind of a lot of questions. So it's important to talk about how
- you get least and what the sort of network is in the community and some of the challenges that are still
- present, but also some of the overcome with getting people housed quickly. Yeah, absolutely. Great question, John.
- Many of us who own homes don't actually realize how tight the rental market is in this community, especially
- if we've been in our house for a little while. Bloomington and Forrest, you can correct me if I've got
- this wrong. Last time I checked, Bloomington had the lowest vacancy rate in the state. Is that still
- true, do you think? Yeah. It's always between us and Marion County. So it's either first or second.
- But yeah, so it's tremendously difficult. I will tell you this, at New Hope, families stay for an average
- of a little over 90 days. By 30 days, 80% of families are ready to move out. That is, they have a job,
- they have childcare, they have income, they have what they need. What they do not have is a lease. They
- cannot find a lease.
- more than two thirds of the resources that we are putting into shelter are just housing search and placement.
- So if we had more landlords, if we had more leases, what that tells me is that we could save tremendous
- resources and more importantly, reduce the impact of homelessness on children by about two thirds. So
- leasing up
- is far and away the most difficult part of this process. It's hard if you're in a market-based lease
- through our partnership with Beacon Rapid Re-Housing. It's hard if you are in a Section 8 lease, which
- is called a Housing Choice Voucher. It is hard to get into public housing. All of those things are hard.
- There are no easy ways to rent unless you are a student, in which case it's not easy, but it's a little
- bit easier. Does that answer your question, John?
- And I will say this, we also know that people living in poverty, more than two thirds of them are spending
- at least half of their income on their housing, which isn't a lot of income to begin with. Sorry, Michael,
- go ahead. Thank you so much. So this is maybe my background is in education. So I'm very curious about
- the early learning center and the population it serves. It sounds like you have a large number of children
- there. Is it
- children, the families who are served by New Hope, as well as children, other families who are interested.
- What ages do you serve? You know, just I'd love to hear more about it. Yeah, absolutely. So we serve
- families birth to five and up to 60 young children. At least 50 percent of the children enrolled in
- our school at any given time are children impacted by homelessness.
- At least 30% of the children in our school are children who are not impacted by homelessness. And that's
- for a few reasons. It helps to stabilize the economic model. It helps to stabilize the classrooms. And
- as I mentioned earlier, it does help create some exposure. We know that learning outcomes are better
- for all children in a mixed income classroom. So that's why we're looking at it in that way. The middle
- 20% is flexible based on needs and siblings and et cetera.
- We have a play-based curriculum, so we're really focused on whole child, child-led work. We know that
- no one's able to work if they haven't had enough to eat, which means we should all be very productive
- after this lunch, which I mean, I'm gonna need a nap. And we are focused on meeting families where they
- are as well. So we don't have any enrollment fees, we don't have any activity fees. Once children are
- enrolled, they may stay until they go to kindergarten.
- Some children do and some children don't. If you end up moving to Bedford or Ellisville or even just
- the far west side or the far south side, it may be more convenient, may make more sense to go somewhere
- closer, especially if you do not have a car, which many of our families don't. But we know that about
- half of the kids end up staying for at least one full academic year, which is fantastic because that's
- really what we're looking for for them to help improve those outcomes.
- Thank you so very much for this information. I didn't hear you really talk about dollar signs. And we
- know that everything has a cost to it. And I would like for you to talk a little bit and inform us about
- what you really need in the way of money. Yeah. So what we really need in the way of money is a few things.
- When we look at that prevention and diversion work that I was talking about that we have begun to do
- in a much more robust way in the past several years, a lot of that was funded by ARPA. So the American
- Rescue Plan Act during the pandemic provided extra funds for a lot of different activities in our community
- and others. And so that's an area where we're going to be looking to the community. Another place is
- with early learning. So for a while in our state, we had
- open enrollment for our CCDF vouchers. A CCDF voucher works a little bit like a housing choice voucher,
- but essentially families apply for it, and then they can use it at qualified providers to pay for childcare.
- Unfortunately, in our state, we now have a wait list that's a few tens of thousands of families long.
- So our governor did recently release some funds to help alleviate that, but only enough to serve about
- one third of the families who are waiting.
- Obviously, and that wait list right now is between 18 and 24 months long for most families. Obviously,
- if you're experiencing homelessness, you can't wait that long. There is a way for families to get an
- expedited voucher, but it's complicated. And so we serve families in our early learning program regardless
- of whether they have a voucher today, because today is when they need childcare so they can get housing.
- And we will continue to do that for as long as they need it.
- So that's another area that comes to mind. Right now, New Hope has done tremendous growing over the
- past 15 years. And right now we're really focused on not necessarily adding new programs. We're really
- focused on this promise of no child sleeps outside and making sure that we have the resources in our
- community to sustain all the new things that we have been adding in the past several years. So those
- are the things that right now have vulnerable funding sources, I would say.
- Did that answer your question? Okay. Hi, thanks for being here. And I was delighted to see that your
- facility was on the garden walk tour this year. Thank you. And two things. First, I was surprised at
- how much space was all plants or gardens or something all over the place there. And then second, I wanted
- to know if the families or children are involved in any of those garden growing things or things like that.
- Thank you for asking. It was a delight to be on the Garden Walk this year. And it's a little, I don't
- know if hypocritical is quite the right word for me to come up here and say it was wonderful because
- I did none of that work. I will tell you, we have a remarkable team of volunteers. I have a particularly
- black thumb and cannot seem to keep anything alive other than my two children so far. But yes, we have
- a remarkable team of volunteers who have just
- poured their love into these gardens. One of the foundational beliefs that we have at New Hope is that
- we want to treat families with dignity. And the way that we present our spaces is one of the ways that
- we express that to families. So sometimes I tell people about the reason we have beautiful early learning
- classrooms, you guys saw some photos of those, is because when we give that to children, we are telling
- them something about what they are and about what we believe they deserve.
- And so our words and our actions serve as mirrors for children so that they understand that. And that's
- true for grownups too, when we forget that sometimes. But having a space that's beautiful is one of
- the ways that we say you are valuable. We believe that everyone deserves access to beauty and that when
- you are in crisis, you need it a little bit more than other people. That you may especially need to
- be able to sit in a gazebo with some wild flowers and take a deep breath.
- So I didn't plant a single one of those flowers, but I sure enjoy them every day. And our families love
- to work in our garden. The kids have garden time at least once a week in each of their classrooms. Even
- the infants get to go outside and play in the garden. But the big kids get to help harvest. Everything
- in our ladybug garden is tasteable. So the kids get to taste anything that they want to in there. Sometimes
- they even eat it.
- which is remarkable if you've tried to give a three-year-old a green bean lately. But that is one of
- the real joys for me, is watching our kids out there experiencing things. We know that children from
- low-income families are often food insecure, and we know that food insecure families are the least likely
- to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables because of the cost. And so early childhood is a time
- that we really have to be exposing
- our children to those foods. And that's especially hard if you're low income because exposing your child
- to asparagus often means putting that asparagus into the trash afterwards because they don't always
- eat it. And so this is one of the ways that we can help with that exposure for families as well.
- Thank you. Thank you. Outstanding presentation. I want to ask you to kind of
- go up like the 30,000 foot level. Obviously you've done an outstanding job where you are now. And I
- wonder if you could share your observations about how we're doing as a city and a county in addressing
- the homeless issue and what from your leadership and experience and broad knowledge of this area, not
- just what are your observations, but do you have some recommendations or thoughts about
- where we might go. I'm not asking you to critique every single agency, but I really feel like you're
- kind of a thought leader in this area, and I'd love your thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. I'm flattered
- to be asked, Jeff. I think it's, in addition to working at New Hope for Families, I've been privileged
- to be a part of Heading Home of South Central Indiana, as has Forrest and some other leaders.
- I will say this. My experience is that this work is harder this year than it was last year. And it was
- harder last year than it was the year before. Right now, there are some choices happening at the federal
- and state level that make it even harder than usual. But even without those things, it would still be
- harder because our housing market is too tight.
- We do not live in a community where affordable housing happens accidentally or happens naturally. It
- has to happen on purpose. And I don't think we have leaders who don't want affordable housing, but I
- do think we sometimes struggle to land the plane on some of those things. So from my perspective, our
- service providers are working together more closely than we have in the past. At least that's my experience.
- And we're even begin to work more closely together regionally, which is one of the ways that we solve
- this problem, right? I'm gonna say something that maybe I shouldn't say on a recording, but here we
- go. Bloomington is such a beautiful and vibrant place. And I think we're all really proud to be from
- here. And we're all really proud to live here. And we all really like living here and having the values
- that we do.
- The way that we do things right now is working for some of us, but it's not working for a lot of us.
- And those aren't people in this room, and those aren't people who already own homes. And so it can be
- difficult to understand that. But we have to be willing for some things to change about our community
- in terms of where we put housing and how we do it, and in particular, where poor people can live. Because
- we know that when we isolate poverty,
- we're making sure that it can thrive. And when we spread it out, we're helping to break it down. And
- that's a tricky thing to do. And it's a tricky thing to do with zoning ordinances. And this is true
- everywhere. This isn't unique to Bloomington. But in my experience, one of the things that makes a difference
- is when we're able to put families into a lot of different places and not just one or two housing
- developments. So from my perspective,
- You know, more housing is very much the answer. Lots of kinds of housing and all over town. And that's
- hard. And I'm glad that I don't work at the planning department because I wouldn't presume to say exactly
- how that should look. But I do think it does require all of us to do a little bit of thinking about
- how we might be willing for our own neighborhoods to look a tiny bit different in order that more people
- can have what they need.
- So two things. We've had several speakers over the last month, I would say. We had Wendy Goodlett come
- and speak from Habitat for Humanity. We had Denzel Ross speak from IU Health. And there were data points
- that we all got to see from each of those presentations that tie in exactly to what you're saying right
- now. And I just want to remind everyone, if you think about Denzel presenting IU Health, the population
- of the 65 plus was, it grew by about 15% since 2016.
- What does that mean? We have a lot more older people, which is great because we bring the experience.
- But we're also taking a lot of the housing that's affordable. That's okay, but to your point, we as
- older people set in our ways have to be open to new ideas. I include myself in this category. I'm 64,
- I'm pretty dang close. We have to look at the properties that are out there that have the space to put ADUs.
- You know, as long as they make them nice looking, we need to be open to that because the housing is
- not going to. If we can't build it, they're going to Ellitsville. They're going to Martinsville. We
- are losing that growth. Business gets stifled. We've got I think the stat that Wendy gave. We have 1000
- Airbnbs out there and that's great. Somebody is making money off those. They're full maybe 40% of the
- time. Probably that's 60% of the time that somebody is not living there.
- So there are so many different pressure points that are on this that we have to be thought leaders with
- our community to help people think differently and not be so close minded. So that was the first thing.
- My real question for you was on the daycare, you have to balance the need to cover the expenses, which
- means you have to look at making sure you're full.
- How do you balance that with the flow of people coming in and you never know what age the child's going
- to be and to make sure that you have availability? I mean, I, I remember daycare is the number one nightmare.
- Anytime I moved, it was, that was the number one thing. And so how do you balance that and make sure
- you have availability for those kids as they come in? Yeah, that's a great question. Uh, and the answer
- is unfortunately it's expensive, right? What it means is that right now I've got an empty seat in our
- infant classroom.
- Our school year is like the MCCSE school year. So kids start in a classroom first day of school, August
- 3rd this year, and they stay in that classroom all year. I know that the seats in my infant classroom
- are gonna be in the highest demand all year. I also know that if I enroll a family into that seat, they're
- going to expect to stay all year. And so, although we could be receiving income from a middle income
- family, and quite a lot of it actually, because it's very expensive to have daycare,
- what we choose to do instead is to forego that income because we know that in the next couple of weeks,
- we haven't met them yet, but there's a family who's going to need it. And that's part of the reason
- why, well, it's very difficult to make money at daycare if you're doing it well. But at our daycare
- in particular, because we are saving those seats, that's part of the reason when you asked about funding
- needs, that's one of them, is being able to save that spot.
- So our infant classroom is equipped to hold up to nine children. We have eight in there right now, and
- that's intentional. I think now we have identified the baby who's going to use it, who was born three
- weeks ago, which means that we enrolled everybody else for those classes. That classroom was full in
- January. We had already identified, we were saying to anyone else who called, I'm sorry, we can put
- you on the wait list.
- there is no chance that this family that is experiencing homelessness now and had a baby three weeks
- ago knew they were going to be in this position in January. And so it's a big part of what we're doing
- is thinking about that really intentionally, right? I started the place and I couldn't get my kids in
- until they were eight months old. So it is, it's remarkably difficult to have childcare and it is, so
- saving those spots is how we do it.
- I've had a good bit of first-hand experience with homeless relatives, actually both my parents, though
- I only speak to my mom. She's been highly resistant to services, and I suspect this applies to a lot
- of homeless people because she has a dog. She won't go anywhere. She can't take the dog.
- I think she likes the dog more than me, honestly. And I can't blame her. But I was wondering, serving
- families, how are family pets addressed in this situation? Are people resistant to accepting services
- if it means giving up the pet? How do you deal with that kind of situation? Because it seems like there's
- no good answer.
- It's really hard. First of all, I'm really sorry about your parents and especially about your mom. We
- see that a lot. It is really common. We're really fortunate in this community to have providers like
- Beacon where you can bring your dog. At New Hope, you cannot, unfortunately. You can only bring a trained
- service animal to New Hope for families. What we do, though, instead is that in that prevention and
- diversion work, we help to identify a place for that dog to go.
- And also because we feel pretty confident that we can get families through quickly, it is a little bit
- easier perhaps to find a friend or a family member who might take care of that dog if we said, okay,
- would you do it for six weeks and then we'll check back in. And then after six weeks, if we're pretty
- close to identifying a lease, then it's, okay, well, do you think you could hold on for another six
- weeks? Because at the end of 12 weeks, most people are housed. And so that's how we do it. It has long
- been a dream of mine.
- It's a sort of passion project that hasn't gotten off the ground yet, but will, to set up a community
- fostering program for pets of homeless families. I have seen families where dad sleeps in the car with
- the dog and mom comes inside with the kids. I have seen families where dad never comes to the shelter,
- where he continues to camp with the dog.
- while mom comes to the shelter with the kids and then they're reunited in housing. Thankfully, I haven't
- seen a lot of that. I have seen more of working with the Humane Association. Again, because we're usually
- looking at something time-limited, it is easier to say, okay, what about your brother who lives
- in Martinsville? Could he stay there? What if we were able to identify someone who would help pay for
- the dog food? Some of this work is sometimes called housing problem-solving.
- And what's really interesting about it, and I'm so glad you asked because it doesn't apply just to the
- people, right? Pets are a part of our families and we know that. And so when we're able to do that,
- when I say that we meet families where they are, this is exactly the sort of thing that we mean, right?
- Is that we say, okay, we know that you love this cat. And let's think about how we can make sure that
- this cat gets to stay a part of your family at the end of this.
- So one day I would love to have a better answer even than that, but I'll keep you. I'll I'll reach out
- to Michael and ask if I can come back to tell you about it. Questions online. My quick question. The
- cameraman has one quick question is is for the families that you stay connected to after you do it.
- I imagine you run a sets of. Imagine you run a set of like all sorts of different kinds of opinions
- about that as in,
- Some of them want nothing to do with the connecting with you because I was homeless and now I'm not.
- But some probably really enjoy the community you've helped create and the other people supporting them.
- What do you do to actually try to ensure that that community and connection remains? What are your actual
- strategies to be able to do that? Yeah.
- So that's a great question. The first is that we are all about relationship-based care, and that's true
- in our early learning, and it's true in our shelter. So they're going to have someone that they already
- have known, someone that's already been invested in them, someone who's helped them to get housed is
- going to be the person who reaches out. Secondly, through a generous grant, right now we're able to
- offer some incentives. So we offer grocery store gift cards, so Kroger cards, for people who participate
- in that survey that I mentioned.
- But participation has been pretty robust. We've only had, I think, four families total over three years
- who have completely declined to participate. And one of those families moved out of state. Another one
- moved out of country. And then one of them opted back in after a little while. I will say this. The
- other thing that's remarkable, and I should have mentioned in the presentation, is that New Hope has
- always had a pretty low recidivism rate.
- But in the three years that we've been doing this, our recidivism rate is zero. We have had not one
- single successful family come back to us since we started this. We've had a couple who came. Yeah, right.
- But you're right. Oftentimes, families say, look, I don't want to think about when I was homeless. Are
- you kidding me? It's like how people have an aversion to hospitals after someone they know has died,
- right? They don't want to come back to New Hope. Are you kidding? That was a terrible time.
- And so being able to reach out to them, we also go to their homes to do these. So we don't ask them
- to come to us. We send someone out to go to their home, talk with them, see how it's going, give them
- a Kroger gift card and say, is everybody paying their Duke bill? Is anything happening? Because things
- happen, right? If you were on the edge of homelessness before, you're gonna come to the edge again.
- And so we wanna be there to help make sure that we can support that. Thank you guys so much.
- Thank you. Well, Forest, you weren't kidding. That was a good ride. I want to thank everyone who helped
- bring this meeting to fruition. Marilyn, wonderful job greeting. Myself for your guest introductions,
- Forest for the speaker introduction.
- Joy for Zoom hosts. Nice having you back from Alaska. Emily, great reflection. Thank you for that. Judy
- Schroeder for doing the reporting. Michael Shermas, glad to have you back running the camera and microphone.
- And then Jeff, I'm not sure if you got any pictures or not. Thank you so. Good.
- And then Jill, thank you for all you do, keeping us organized. And Tyler, of course, with the audio
- and equipment. Our next meeting will be in the Georgian room on the 1st. John Kiesler will be our special
- guest discussing trauma-informed care, so please join us if you're able. And with that, if you're able
- to, oh, Michelle has an announcement. Oh, there's a community service meeting right after this, so please
- stick around. And Tyler, if you're able, please stand for the four-way test.
- of the things we think, say or do. First, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concerned? Third,
- will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? And fifth,
- is it fun?