Notes by Larry Talley:
We met at Ellen's home. Present were Rebecca, Ramona, Mary, Talitha, Ellen, Charles, Laurie, and Larry.
We discussed whether we should become our own 501c3 non-profit and we are leaning in that direction. Talitha and Mary will draft a mission statement which will inform further work towards documentation required for 501c3 status
. Some notes from the mission discussion... "safety, being cared about, place where they can look more deeply, human potential, reflect about who they are, what they are called to... safe, companions on same journey, time, place, structure..."
Haven House is a faith-based organization providing supported structured living opportunities to foster healing and self-sufficiency for women coming out of prison.
We discussed promising models established in other communities, including Jericho Road in Sitka, Miryam's House in Spokane, etc. We discussed other organizations which provide similar services including Love Inc, Catholic Community Services, and St. Vincent DePaul. We agreed that we would want to provide a haven for 1 to 2 years.
We chose a name for our project, Haven House. Larry agreed to reserve DNS name(s) and create a GoogleGroup.
The internet domain name havenhouse.org was already registered (to someone in Bristol, Great Britain), so, I chose to register havenhousejuneau.org, and I created a Google email address to match. So the email address is:
havenhousejuneau@gmail.com
We discussed a property that might become available, that would be well suited for a group home.
We discussed sources of funds, anticipated challenges with conditional use permits and the planning commission, structured support and 24-hour staff.
Larry agreed to ask Dan Austin of St. Vincent DePaul to meet with us and advise us from his experience with St. Vincent DePaul and the Juneau Homeless Coalition.
I just had lunch with Dan Austin, who I believe is a manager of St. Vincent DePaul in Juneau. Dan is active in the Juneau Homeless Coalition and very familiar with housing needs, resources, non-profit organizations, and fund-raising. I believe we will want Dan's advice frequently as we move forward. Unfortunately, he will be out-of-town during our next meeting, in fact he doesn't return until August – but, I suggest we schedule some time for him on our agenda at our August meeting.
Based on how I represented our group and our goals (and thanks to Talitha for the mission statement), Dan recommends that we get moving right away on the non-profit status. He also suggested that our clients might not need another case worker, based on his experience he assumes they will already have several. And he suggested that transitional housing is only a temporary solution, so he encourages us to consider longer rather than shorter tenancy.
We agreed to meet again June 29.
