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HomeAid Reaches Milestone of Serving 100,000 Homeless
HomeAid has just announced that it has reached the milestone of serving more than 100,000 homeless men, women and children.
Since it was founded 20 years ago to address the needs of the nation’s homeless population, HomeAid has grown to 22 chapters in 16 states. The organization’s 170 facilities provide more than 4,200 beds each night to homeless families and individuals and represent more than $120 million in project construction costs.
Occupants of HomeAid’s temporary housing are helped to become self-sufficient through a recovery process that facilitates their transition into affordable housing.
“Our model involves builders and their trade partners donating their time, resources, materials and expertise to construct multi-unit homeless housing facilities,” said Jeffrey Slavin, CEO of HomeAid.
“Being able to help more than 100,000 homeless individuals, a large percentage of whom are children, makes a very powerful statement about the generosity of the home building industry, especially during these difficult economic times,” Slavin said.
HomeAid enables builders to do what they do best: build,” said Bert Selva, president and CEO of Shea Homes. “The payback is to help someone who is homeless in his or her transition and, person by person, you start making a difference in the world.”
The labor and materials donated to build HomeAid’s facilities represent an average 61% of their total direct construction costs.
“This donation rate enables a homeless service provider who is given a facility to realize a leveraging effect, when all project costs are included, of more than twice the hard dollars invested in the project,” noted Slavin. “This leveraging effect has enabled our service providers to add capacity to help their communities’ homeless population become productive members of society.”
With another 55 projects now being developed by its chapters, HomeAid expects to see a dramatic impact in the number of homeless people it serves in the next few years.
“As new chapters are added and our organization’s capacity grows to help other non-profit service providers, the ultimate benefactors will be the nation’s 3.5 million homeless families and individuals to whom HomeAid represents an opportunity to rebuild their lives,” said Slavin.
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