my name is karen surreally and i moved to seattle about seven years ago and i met we from the green and green bean coffee shop which is just a couple blocks away from my house in greenwood and we figured out we had a lot in common and is basically where friendship started bringing this area eight years now and i'm grateful to live in this area i love it very much and i originally got to know this neighborhood through our running the green being coffeehouse which is a local nonprofit coffee house here in greenwood out of that experience was able to meet a lot of people from all walks of life that was the main reason why we birthed that place was seeing how separate everyone's life saw and how isolation camps keeps the poor being poor and how isolation for all of us and relationships are really the biggest poverty in our country today and so that was a big reason why we started the green being was to nurture a space a safe space for people to know one another be have to one another so i had the privilege of running not place for about five years and stepped out of that to be unable to spend more time on the with individuals that i've been meeting out of that space that don't have homes well it's hard it's hard to know how to how to tell the story of how all this happened because it just it just naturally happened i think the community of people that that we're friends with  we all have the same essence and that we believe that these these people don't have homes that are living in motels and that are struggling with addiction there are there are friends there are neighbors who love them and in all of our different ways for a long time we journey with them and so how we all got together was that we decided to start a church about two and a half years ago that was with the intention of focusing more on aurora and having that be our primary focus so that was about two and a half years ago  intimidated i'd say by by the motels and and things but the same time i was drawn to to the area and i was i actually was really curious about the culture  war and i over over time an american or a position became available for me to be able to do some community organizing and so that just fit really beautifully in with  what i had already been doing but it just would be definitely more time to be able to spend and get to know the culture on aurora and i always felt like you know i was working a full time job and was also a student i always felt like aurora would get kind of my scraps of time so when the american position became available that just was really amazing because i really could focus more  on aurora and get really spend time getting to know people and so i spent a lot of my time in this area which just so happens to be also where we flew live and her husband andy one thing with my mare quark position and i was trying to get to know people wasn't sure exactly how to do that and our church had actually started a garden in the backyard here here which is really amazing because  of course we said andy were fine with that but also all the other tenants who live here were also really excited about that and so you know it started out with just a small group of folks and then it's just kind of become more and more communal and from a garden and i started a barbecue just in order to get to know people and i wasn't sure exactly you know how to how to get to know people more naturally and so the barbecue started last summer every wednesday night and all the tenants you know here totally allowed us to be able to have a barbecue or barbecues or something that just became a really beautiful thing here and  folks all over the neighborhood come out to it whether they're homeowners or renting are living in their van or just maybe even living on the street everyone needs up here and i just feel like it's a place of it all be on the same platform and nobody knows where someone has come from and things like that and so you just really get to know people naturally here and them but i the best part about it is the fact that it's not a soup kitchen feel the community has really taken ownership over it and so you have all different people growing sides of things like that it's just amazing  the friendships that have formed out of it and i and i feel like this is an extension of my family here at the barbecue is the family we already knew that people needed a place to gather and we already knew from our experience of the green being that people one of their rights as human beings is to say no one be known and to give in be given to you and one of the things that greets us the most as a community is seen how very much for them to heal and to be a bridge for a shame that that they need to be told that they're not they're unique we gifted and be asked to be a part of something beautiful  see people that unfortunately have been as a small stories one with prostituted women have been sexually abused as children who have a hard time in social situations that have no family no community all the resources have been taken from them as far as family and friends we've been able to see through time start to to change and when they didn't want to throw some at the table maybe maybe weeks later they said at the table one story in particular one of the women hadn't played the harmonica since she was twelve which is really a sign of showing that the trauma that was inflicted on her as a child that she didn't ask for she didn't deserve that was was not her true destiny robbed her of her childhood and how to play the harmonica and she was twelve and i remember like six months after one time at the barbecue she she said to me i'm going to go get my apartment my harmonica and she went comic from from her car and came back in and she started playing harmonica and and we have to celebrate those moments because because that was a part of her saying that a part of a spark in her was starting to light again and i'm very grateful to joining with her i'm very grateful for those small transformation it's hard because we don't we don't see a lot of transformation takes a lot of time and the reason why we what we've learned as we've journeyed with these people is that a big big reason why we don't see a lot of transformation is because the way the systems and the structures are set up there really are really feeling these people who know we know this and know we now and seeing that as much as we've tried to work for the last ten years for social and systemic change it's not changing and so as a community we've decided that while we'll keep working for change we're not going to wait for these are our friends and we love them and we're tired of them not receiving their rights as human beings and so that's really directed us in our work so there's a lot of different different ways that we live out our days y you know the past couple years that i've been getting to know or just more intimately i would say i think i had been pretty naive in thinking that all by any means because some are really doing a great job of communicating with each other but i have spent i mean it's just been so frustrating for me to spend you know an entire day and i have i have a car able to you know take take a woman who who's now a friend of mine just she's pretty sure she was quite pregnant and she really needed to figure out how they knew she was living in one of the motels close by here and so we were just trying to fill out her paperwork in and take it to all these different locations and we'd show up at one place and we'd be turned away because one paper wasn't filled in or we we didn't know we knew of the other paper just the amount of hours that it took i cannot imagine her being on the bus and everything is also pretty far away from from where we are from where she was staying and i can't imagine her having to be on a bus very uncomfortable you know eight months pregnant and having to deal with all of that by herself she  that was pretty early on and really impacting to me and and she spoke english she will speak english fluently and i can't imagine either being new to this country not being able  to speak english well and also just being marginalized and so that process that lisa's talking about it is it does isolate in a marginalized marginalizes people  where you really have to have i just feel like and an overwhelming amount of self confidence and courage to be able to get through all the hoops that person needs to get through in order to find housing or disks get actually into the system and so that is something that has become really apparent to me as live gotten to know  individuals and families who live in the motels along the way or that it i don't you know i don't blame anyone for being for giving up basically because i we really hope to walk alongside of people who are going through the hoops and if there are some ways that we can you know answers answered you know alleviate some of those who maybe locally or or throughout the community here in greenwood or green lake area that would be that would be ideal having the community take responsibility for  neighbors for some of the folks who actually really do belong to the community instead of pushing everyone off to some sort of agency that's downtown or you know in kent or something like that so it's been the last couple years of us of us journeying with our neighbors and learning from them that we've gotten to this place for we say these are the things that we found ourselves doing with our own homes and now we're very grateful up we've been able to open a new community center here on the route so we can be better and able to do that even more so like karen mentioned are our greatest desire is to see our communities embracing us and so what we've decided as our faith community is to nurture the growth of something that we're calling the aurora care continuum and it's really beautiful it's really simple what it is is just trying to organize circles of care around every individual that we meet so that when they do get housing they're not left alone because they can't they can't transition from homelessness to housing on their own and one of the things that we're doing right now is we have a new interest loan program that we've just recently started in the last year we've been able to transition as of now i think i think it's been five six i think five individuals and families from homelessness to two  housing but we do not believe in just stopping there we form circles of care around each of these individuals so that's something that we just recently started and that's what we hope to continue to do through t so that's a huge part of what we do group of people coming together and supporting someone through that journey from wherever they are whether it's from homelessness to having an community and through the hour no interest loan program which is called the vacancy project he was able to go from his man to an apartment local apartment which was also important to  him and since then he's been you know having having a hard time with with the transition which is a which is really normal and there have been a group of people who have stepped up about six seven people who have stepped up  o are willing to just do really simple things that once a week there will be somebody that comes by somebody that he already knows who's from the neighborhood to stop by his apartment and just check on and see how he's doing see if  so that he's not feeling overwhelmed and you know taking him you know just hanging out with him going on walks encouraging him to play his guitar things like that so that's basically what the sort of care is i can think of a couple who is living in a motel and she's pregnant and she's doing pretty much any day now and we're hoping to maybe have a circle of care for for this couple because she's at this point going to have to take a bus in order to get to the hospital and so there's just we just you know for one person to take that take that responsibility on is a lot but if you have six six or seven people who will agree to just have a once a month commitment to one person that's it's really not that big of a deal on that and there's just such a it's such a quality time to i mean it's just such a really natural and you know i just can't think of a word but it just feels it just really feel so so so natural and just good to be able to do something like that and just have a real relationship with with someone that you look forward to seeing at least once a month so that's circle  house as well so people who want to come and be a part of the aurora share house and after a certain measure of training and getting to know the neighborhood things like that they'll be able to be a part of this the circle of care program and yeah i'm excited to be able to believe that and i'm sure i know for a fact that it's not going to be black and white that there's going to be a lot of you know just juggling and learning as we go but i'm really excited to be a part of it and to see you something that we've been  happen and there are a lot of people who have already contacted me who want to help out in some way and i think you know it's not going to it's not going to just be oh you can come in and  you know sweet sweet floors for two hours type of volunteers will definitely encourage people to actually get in to life here in their community and  be satisfied with just you know punch card in and out but really push their limits i think and maybe be a little uncomfortable but i think once people really start to experience what it can be like to black and white way to describe what this journey looks like every day is very different and so forming these circles of care something that we're very committed to is as having policy and procedure place but not being guided out of that policy and procedure or very much come into being story center and survivor center we want our relationship with these individuals that we love to guide us and not let any policy and procedure get in the way of their care and their rights as human beings and i think that's really important to note and i think it's also the gift that a community based nonprofit can offer to the world so are very much committed to that hold us accountable to it one of the things that we're very committed to and when we started when we started this journey was was having housing be a piece of this puzzle we wouldn't feel good about our work and who else that was we said that like last year thinking that maybe it would be down the road but we've been very grateful to in the past six months through a miraculous story be given the shelter a fully functioning beds are already in there all the furniture is there and his throbbing throbbing to have people come and stay in there it was given to us in the process of raising the money right now just to be able to buy groceries for the individuals that stay there and also to pay him to live in manager that is already living there to be there where we are very grateful for this gift that has been given to us because housing is the number one issue in this country today so again this is a shelter that we will be opening hopefully soon and there's not one day we're you know are going to multiple people that need a place to live so it's hard right now to look at them and know that that place is there in this ready and that we can't bring them there yet but we are every day stepping towards trying to raise enough money to open up those doors we need money and then there has been one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of back that paid off on this place and just given to us this isn't a hidden location in  please please let us know we really believe in this and again with those circles of care and believe that when the individual hard time staying in the shelter for eighteen months which is an amazing thing that they can say so on for eighteen months say that they will not be left on their own they will continue to be a part of our community and we will create safe places for them to work safe continuance of care for them to