One family at a time

COVID-19 scared everyone, especially families. Unemployment increased, schools stumbled through online learning, grocery stores were bare of essential goods. Imagine all this and losing your home.

Family Promise of North Idaho is a local chapter of a national organization that aims to provide families with a safe place to get back on their feet.

Working with the organization as the family service coordinator since 2016, Lisa Donaldson aids families by developing action plans that address housing, education, employment, and financial instabilities. Most families Donaldson talks to are focused on finding a home, which has become increasingly difficult due to COVID-related job losses and housing costs at an all-time high.

"The housing search has been the most difficult during COVID," Donaldson said. "I have a single mom with an infant right now who is struggling because she has to work, and businesses have cut their hours, so it's hard for her to connect. She's tried calling, and she's tried stopping by, so she has to adjust her schedule."

Donaldson said many of those coming to Family Promise are part of the ALICE population, considered the working poor. In 2018, 27% of households in Kootenai County were considered the working poor, and 11% fell under the poverty line, according to the United Way for ALICE.

ALICE families face limited assets such as constrained incomes, the costs of supporting young children, minimum wage employment and health issues.

"One of the biggest things we strive for is that we never want our families to feel 'less than' because they are homeless," Donaldson said. "They are not homeless people; they are people in a homeless situation. That is not who they are, and it's a huge deal."

Through partnerships with local congregations, Family Promise is able to help struggling families by providing safe housing, meals and counseling.

Usually, families rotate between a network of 19 churches that host meals and provide sleeping arrangements on a week-to-week basis. Due to state-mandated isolation orders and limitations on large gatherings, many churches were forced to close their doors from March until May.

"Our regular rotation houses families at the church in the evening. Then they come back to our facilities during the day," Donaldson said. "We were very blessed to have a couple of our network churches jump in, letting our families stay at their locations."

The Post Falls Seventh Day Adventist Church and Calvary Lutheran Church in Post Falls worked with Family Promise by taking on a creative model allowing host families to stay in their facilities day and night.

"The special thing about the two congregations that stepped up during COVID is that they allowed our families to stay there without having a host," said Cindy Wood, the executive director of Family Promise of North Idaho. "We don't normally do that for several reasons. One because you're in another space, another is about relationships and isolation."

Usually, two hosts stay with families overnight, Wood said, bringing food and spending time with them. To minimize the risk of coronavirus spread, congregations were only allowed to deliver food at the door. Wood and Donaldson would trade off spending at least two hours a day at the churches, but they said it was apparent that the families lacked human interaction.

"The families were almost waiting by the door. They were hungry for conversation and for somebody different to come in," Wood said.

When the congregations could no longer host, Family Promise of North Idaho adapted to finding a two-bedroom apartment and motel room to accommodate family needs. Wood said the churches continued to provide significant support for the organization through meal donations, delivering hot dinners nightly, and groceries on Sunday for breakfast and lunch.

During a period of financial insecurity across the county, Wood recognized that their volunteers delivered essential goods like disinfectant wipes, toilet paper, medicine, clothes, and food.

Wood and Donaldson agreed that they're looking forward to returning to their regular schedule working with congregations and opening their day center up to families. Looking to the future, they hope to expand their network and service to help more people.

"We really couldn't be more blessed to have had the aid from our congregations and network of partners during this time," Wood said. "Our No. 1 goal is to continue servicing our families and helping them find a permanent home. Truly, the house is the foundation of everything."