Homeward Bound
Pamela A. Martin, Ph. D., Executive Director
29 W. Thomas Road, Suite E
Phoenix, Ariz. 85013-4492
(602) 263-7654
(602) 265-4006 fax

Committed to providing a "continuum of care" for homeless families from the emergency shelter through transitional housing to self-sufficiency and a home of their own, Homeward Bound has built an enviable track record in just four years, winning praise from U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and President Bill Clinton himself.

Founded as an independent non-profit organization in 1990 by a group of local housing advocates, including Msgr. Ed Ryle of the Archdiocese of Phoenix, Homeward Bound was designed to fill a gap between emergency shelters and market-rate housing.

At that time, the bad news of the real-estate crash in the region became good news for housing advocates: With a huge number of foreclosed single-family homes reverting to HUD, advocates invoked the Single Family Property Disposition - Homeless Initiative rule of the Cranston-Gonzales Act, which requires that HUD inventory all its residential property every October and set aside 10 percent of it for homeless programs.

Through this measure, in the setting of Phoenix's collapsed real-estate economy, Homeward Bound soon built an inventory of 125 homes for which it pays $1 a year under five-year leases. These homes -- mostly single-family units but some condominiums -- now house about 500 homeless people (mostly in single-parent families) as they undergo case management, counseling and skills training aimed at getting them back into the community.

Then Homeward Bound built on this windfall with a public-private partnership, akin to the church-partnership principle innovated by Phoenix's model program, The Bridge, but larger: Community sponsors and donors are sought to provide both money ($3,300 a year) and personal support through volunteers for every homeless family.

While some sponsors -- who range from private individuals to McDonnell-Douglas Corp. and the Phoenix Suns basketball team -- provide both money and volunteers, other groups may offer one OR the other, providing opportunities for people who have money but not time, or time but not money, or both. Volunteers, moreover, are carefully screened and trained before beginning contact with homeless families; and they work in concert with trained social workers.

To qualify for entry into the program, families must be homeless and earn less than 50 percent of the county's median income; they are expected to be "clean and sober," having completed drug and alcohol treatment if necessary and having remained so for six months. As the adults find employment, they are expected to pay 30 percent of their adjusted gross income in "program service fees" comparable to rent.

Thanks to affirmative outreach and a multi-cultural staff, Homeward Bound maintains a client population that reflects the community in its ethnic status: 51 percent Anglo, 21 percent Hispanic, 16 percent African-American, 9 percent American Indian, 2 percent Asian and 2 percent other. Although most of the families are female-headed, fully 7 percent of the population is composed of single fathers and their children.

Homeward Bound succeeds, as so many other model grass-roots programs do, because it makes a firm and ongoing commitment to its people. Families spend an average of one year in "transition," getting back on their feet, then may remain in housing for up to two more years as "graduates" before accumulating the wherewithal to become home owners themselves.

Even at that point, they may remain in contact with social workers for up to two more years to ensure that they don't slip back into problems. The organization has "graduated" 67 families, with an overall "success rate" (remaining employed and in housing) of 84 percent -- actually approaching 95 percent among recent graduates. It provides more than 13,000 "bed-nights per month" for individuals who would otherwise be in emergency shelters or worse.

Homeward Bound accomplishes all this with a relatively small staff of 14 (including six case workers whose caseloads are limited to about 20 each) and an annual budget of $1.5 million, of which fully $250,000 is provided by the families' corporate, church and individual sponsors.

"Close, ongoing contact makes the difference," Pamela Martin says. It's a motto that just about all of the nation's best grass-roots initiatives against poverty seem to share.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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