New Hope Housing, Inc.

Our main goal is to contribute to ending homelessness in our community by helping each person we work with to obtain and maintain permanent housing so that they do not become homeless again. Each person and family that exits homelessness and remains stably housed creates a stronger community for us all.

Several of our annual goals for shelter guests stem from our partnership with Fairfax County and other similar local nonprofits. These include preventing occurrences of homelessness and /or making the experience of homelessness brief and non-recurring. Some of the measures used to help demonstrate success toward these goals – and are what we commit to achieving - are reducing length of stay in shelter, improving housing placements, and strengthening income of residents.

The main goal for permanent supportive housing programs is for residents to remain stably housed. Additional goals include growth in daily living skills, and steps toward addressing personal needs and challenges. Case managers and support services staff provide individualized assistance as well as group activities to help residents comply with program residency guidelines, manage personal finances, and maintain stability in the program. While housing stability is the primary goal, the programs are designed to build trust relationships. Case management and support services staff work with residents individually to address daily living skills and personal needs/challenges.

New Hope Housing is working to end homelessness by connecting residents to affordable housing, creating new opportunities for affordable housing, and keeping residents housed long-term. Our shelters are now one of the tools that we can use to help people get back into housing as rapidly as possible. In recent years, we have worked with nonprofit, private, and government partners to develop more housing options for homeless adults and families in our communities. New Hope Housing staff have been integrally involved in the development of local ten year plans and in shaping responses to homelessness that emphasize prevention, rapid re-housing, and increased housing for chronically homeless persons.

New Hope Housing has purchased or leased many housing properties to provide housing to people who have not been able to access housing on their own. This includes people with bad credit, eviction history, criminal records, and people with developmental disabilities or mental health issues. By using master leases, we can sublet units to these residents that other landlords turn away and charge no more than 30% of resident income as rent. This allows residents to build a rental history to help restore credit and to start or build savings. Case managers help each resident access benefits and apply for jobs to increase income for stability.

Our Housing Locators and Housing Case Managers build relationships with private landlords and affordable housing partners to identify housing that is affordable to residents with low-income so that they are not severely rent-burdened. Employment Case Managers provide employment workshops and financial literacy classes in-house and by scheduling skilled volunteers to provide lessons on-site in order for residents to learn how to build resumes, interview for jobs, create budgets and manage finances.

For over 40 years, New Hope Housing has helped transform our region’s thinking and actions towards ending homelessness. Starting as an all-volunteer organization in 1977 serving 8 residents in one shelter, New Hope Housing has grown to a regional agency serving more than 350 persons nightly in shelter, transitional and supportive housing, outreach, prevention and rapid re-housing, and community case management, that has often introduced innovations in homeless services.

New Hope Housing has said “yes” to projects, programs and approaches that others often thought too risky, believing that it is better to try and fail than to not try at all. These “yeses” have led to hundreds of lives being transformed. Some of the programs we tried did not work as well, but we learn from our attempts and we continue to experiment and partner to find the best ways to serve our community.

Two parts of New Hope Housing’s philosophies - believing that all people are worthy of dignity and respect and that employment can be the way out of homelessness for many - combine in hiring practices. At any time, 10-15% of New Hope Housing staff are individuals who have experienced homelessness, and several have been residents in our own programs. Positions currently filled by formerly homeless persons range from custodial staff to program director. In addition, one board member is a former shelter resident.

New Hope Housing recognizes that ending homelessness is a community responsibility and must be undertaken in partnership. New Hope is an active member in formal collaborations established to prevent and end homelessness in each jurisdiction in which we operate programs. This includes the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Partnership on Ending Homelessness, the Partnership to Prevent and End Homelessness in Alexandria City, and Arlington County Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness. Each of these is a network of public agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and individuals that have been and are continuing to work together to plan, coordinate, and implement efficient system-wide responses to homelessness as well as raise community awareness and funding for programs to prevent and end homelessness.

Last fiscal year, we served 1,655 individuals in one or more of our programs. We helped 450 single adults and four families move from shelter to permanent housing. Hundreds of residents have attained new employment and many more participated in personal money management classes.

Each of our shelters has the goal to lower the average length of shelter stay to 30 days or less. Our length of stay averages have lowered to between 60 and 90 days in the past three years. We have expanded our Housing and Employment Case Management staffing to more quickly identify affordable housing units and assist residents with increasing income through employment and benefits. In addition, plan to expand our network of landlords and employers to further speed up the placement process.

Our Permanent Housing Programs are hoping to transition residents who have improved their health status into affordable units in order to free up space for people who need more intensive services. We also continue to apply for increased HUD funding to expand the number of units and housing programs we operate to provide more housing for this specific population. We will identify gaps and needs in our community and identify programs and funding to meet these needs.

In the Bailey’s Crossroads community, we hope to have a successful opening of a new shelter/housing facility that will immediately house 18 chronically homeless adults and shelter up to 52 adults in November 2019. This site and process toward building this site (selecting locations, community hearings, etc), is being used to prepare for three other similar projects in the community, including the Kennedy Shelter that we operate. We hope that the ground-breaking for the new Kennedy project will have taken place by the end of 2021.
New Hope Housing has been recognized for innovation in the homelessness and housing field. We received the 2006 Best Housing Program and 2004 Best Housing Organization Awards from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. We have been a finalist in the Washington Post Excellence in Nonprofit Management Award, and the Executive Director, Pamela L. Michell, has been named a Washingtonian of the Year and received the Excellence in Chief Executive Leadership Award. The Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness awarded New Hope Housing the 2015 “Housing First” award for commitment to serving chronically homeless individuals and families for decades.