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?