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REACH News
July 2022
Housing is a Right
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Reflections on REACH Advocacy’s History, Values, and Mission as we begin our Eighth Year
Peter W Peters – Co-Chair
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REACH’s values and mission have been shaped by our history. In 2015 REACH Advocacy began offering emergency winter shelter to people who were experiencing chronic homelessness in the wider Rochester region. We began as a group of volunteers, most of whom knew very little about this population. We operated an emergency winter shelter each year until 2021 when COVID made congregant shelters too risky for both guests and volunteers. Since then, we have explored alternative ways to reach and assist this population. We have done street outreach in two challenging sections of our city, offering clothing, hygiene, and food items as well as connecting people to the services that they need.
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Housing first is solution #1
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We committed ourselves to the housing first model, believing that the most important step to offer our guests experiencing chronic homelessness is a safe place to sleep so they can work on their social and/or mental health concerns. During our seven years of experience in operating REACH Home shelters, we experienced success in placing over 40% of our guests in permanent housing, most of whom have continued to remain in their housing for more than a year.
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The REACH Team has operated our REACH Homes with the following set of operational values:
- Each guest has intrinsic value and is to be treated with dignity and respect.
- Most of our guests are dealing with trauma-related stress and need to be cared for by trauma-informed support personnel.
- Each guest is given the opportunity to determine what their next step will be in their healing or stabilizing journey.
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"Being here gives me a time to reconnect with myself."
Tamantha
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“REACH home helped me to understand what it meant to be in a family.”
Suzanne
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To give our guests a sense of the wider communities’ compassion, we developed a daily meal program provided by community members.
- Following COVID, we designed a multi-site model of housing our guests in their own rooms and discovered that this added a sense of privacy and dignity, readying a number of our guests for living in their own homes.
- We believe that every person should have a place to call home.
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"REACH Home is a secure place for people to heal."
Eduardo
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"I want to get a place of my own."
A sentiment shared by many of our guests
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After three years of operating REACH Home, we faced the reality that there is a huge shortage of truly affordable and safe housing for people living on a very low income. As a result, we began to explore how we might build a Tiny Home Village to offer affordable, safe, and supportive housing for our guests. Such a model of Social Housing will offer the following operational values:
- Village residents will have a sense of independence and pride of place having their own address.
- Village residents will learn cooperative self-governance establishing the quality of life for the village.
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- Village residents will be enabled to take responsibility for the care and upkeep of their own homes.
- There will be a central support facility linking residents to their support needs.
- Some residents may participate in “sweat equity” arrangements for the maintenance of the Village and the development of a community garden.
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Along the way, the REACH Team has become acutely aware of the housing crisis we face in our city, a crisis that is increasingly true across our nation. It is a crisis driven by the ever-increasing cost of rental housing, along with the market-driven priorities that determine which population will provide the best return on investments in housing. The net result is for every 100 families or individuals living on very low incomes (i.e., below 30% AMI) there are only 30 units available. As a result of this, REACH became REACH Advocacy and seeks to change the narrative around the housing to one that recognizes HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT.
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Finally, in pursuing our mission, to shelter, house, and advocate, we value a spirit of collaboration. We work with related organizations and community groups to bring about a change in how we perceive men and women who are experiencing chronic homelessness and how together we might change the housing narrative in our region so there is housing justice for all people.
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We are thankful for all of our guests, volunteer staff, volunteers, and supporters who have made these past seven years possible.
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Thank you to our readers!
We are grateful for your continued support of REACH Advocacy, Inc.
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