Give Today to Build Toward Housing Justice
Our local housing crisis is on all our minds right now, and rightly so. Whether you have experienced housing insecurity or homelessness yourself, know or love someone who has, or are impacted as a caring community member, we all want a solution – yesterday! Finding a better way to guarantee housing for everyone in our community will take time, but when we put our hearts and minds together and respond generously, we can create meaningful change. Will you partner with the Human Solutions team by giving today?
Homelessness is, at its core, a housing problem. That’s why our focus is on housing first, a proven strategy that acknowledges housing as the essential first step on the path to long-term economic security and wellness. Our goal is a sufficient supply of low-barrier, affordable housing for all who need it, plus the essential supports people need to find a home – and keep it. Our services are designed for people with both urgent and long-term housing needs:
- We offer emergency shelter and rapid rehousing for those experiencing homelessness today.
- We partner with people to maintain their housing and strengthen their finances.
- We build affordable housing needed to create lasting, systemic change for our region.
Since 1988, Human Solutions has been making a real difference for the diverse communities who call East Portland and wider East Multnomah County home. Give today to build toward housing justice.
When we asked a resident of one of our housing communities, Quay, what grounds her in a sense of home, she introduced us to her joyful grandchildren. Having housing is a key building block to a fulfilling life. At Human Solutions, an apartment in one of our 18 affordable housing complexes offers more than a place to live – it offers ways to intentionally build community that feels like home.
1 | Help Us Meet Urgent Needs: Emergency Shelter & Rapid Rehousing
Our philosophy is to start with housing, because experience and research show that without a safe, stable home, people can’t focus on other aspects of their lives. When housing is not immediately available, we offer shelter while people search for their next home. We run three shelters with talented rehousing experts on-site.
Every night, approximately 230 people stay in our shelters, including about 60 children. Our shelters host adults who identify as women, nonbinary and genderqueer and families with kids under 18. We don’t limit how long folks can stay, and we welcome pets as beloved family members. Our welcoming, trauma-informed environment is an important step toward healing and, ultimately, stability and permanent housing.
When you donate to Human Solutions, you make it possible for our expert staff to help more people find their way out of homelessness, toward a brighter future – please give today.
2 | Partner with Us for Housing Stability: Rent, Utility & Career Assistance
Count me in! I want to invest in a just future where everyone has a home.
Helping people keep the housing they already have prevents homelessness and the personal trauma of housing instability that is so hard to recover from. Our services help by offering tools for those experiencing housing insecurity so they can keep their housing – and build toward long-term housing stability. We offer rent and utility assistance, career training and job placement, translation, transportation subsidies, wraparound support services, and – crucially – a caring, trusted person who believes in people.
To continue these strategic programs that help people find and maintain housing, we’re asking for community members like you to make a financial gift today.
3 | Invest with Us in Long-Term Solutions: More Affordable Housing
One of the keys to ending our housing and homeless crises is building more affordable units in the places they’re most needed. Our newest housing community, The Nick Fish, opened to residents this spring with 75 mixed-income apartments adjacent to a wonderful new East Portland park.
Our region lacks a supply of housing that is affordable and suitable to all who need it. That’s why we recently opened 75 apartments in East Portland’s Gateway neighborhood and are excited to have broken ground on 93 more affordable homes in Rosewood. Once this community opens to residents, we will manage 19 affordable housing sites with 897 units. We’re also renovating 42 apartments in Hazelwood to maintain the quality of our affordable housing.
For our communities to move beyond day-to-day survival, we have to repair our broken housing system, which was never designed to equitably serve all of us. Racism – from redlining and zoning laws to landlord discrimination – has always excluded BIPOC from certain neighborhoods and homes, leading to disproportionate housing insecurity and homelessness in these communities.
Human Solutions is building affordable housing in one of the most racially and culturally diverse areas of Oregon, repairing structural problems years in the making. This is how we will bring our community out of our housing and homelessness crises.
Building a community where everyone has a place to call home will take all of us, contributing however we can. The good news? Our efforts are making an impact. Every day, families and individuals move from shelters into apartments they can afford.
Your contribution to Human Solutions today will help more people in our region have a place to call home, which we all deserve.
Thank you for being a crucial partner in this important community-building work – together is the only way forward.
In solidarity,
Andy Miller
Executive Director
P.S. Housing is a human right. Help us end our housing and homelessness crises by getting involved today. Contribute now by mail or at humansolutions.org/givenow.
