Our House e-newsletter July & August 2011 | Page 11

By Ben Goodwin, Grants Manager

For the past eighteen months, Our House has managed a federal
stimulus grant targeted at helping homeless persons transition into
permanent housing. Through the Homelessness Prevention and
Rapid Rehousing (HPRP) grant, Our House has helped 40 families
move into their own homes by providing more than $143,000 in
assistance with rent, utilities, and deposits.
Our HPRP program provided a stepping stone for these families
to help ease the difficult move from homelessness to life on their
own, with our assistance payments steadily reduced, in order to
provide a gradual transition to independence.
One family that benefitted from this program was Leah Weathers
and her son. They lived at Our House for ten months before
moving, with help from our HPRP program, into their own apartment, which was within walking distance of her son’s school and
also very near her job. She re-enrolled in college and continues
to work on improving her family’s future.
Our House’s HPRP program is winding down, with the last assistance payments set for the end of summer. HPRP was a part of the
2009 federal stimulus grant, and it was always intended to be a
short-term program. Although the assistance funding will soon end,
we have learned a great deal about how to help homeless families
succeed after they move out of the shelter, and we are planning to
con-tinue providing other types of support to our clients to help
them succeed in permanent housing.

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