As reported on KVMR, May 24
Hospitality House is the only emergency homeless shelter in Nevada County, with 69 beds for homeless men, women and children.
I’m Fred Skeen, and I’m a Case Manager at Hospitality House, helping individuals in our shelter with their next steps to move from homelessness to housing.
We all know that Nevada County has a huge housing and rental shortage, making this one of the top reasons for homelessness in our community. We are really making an ask for landlords out there that potentially have rooms to rent to please contact us. We have guests at the shelter that are eager and ready to move to a space of their own, but the cost of rentals have greatly increased, and the rooms available for rentals are limited in the area. Another issue that we face is waiting for subsidized housing, there are huge waiting lists of 2-3 years for subsidized housing for individuals, families and seniors. We also have offered section eight vouchers, but there are no places to rent and vouchers are not being honored.
We want landlords to know that we don’t just place people in rentals, we first provide guests with “Ready to Rent” training offered by Tyson Powers, our Housing Case Manager. “Ready to Rent” is a six weeks tenant readiness education curriculum that teaches participants how to create a workable budget, maintain appropriate housekeeping, communicate effectively with landlords and guests earn a “Ready to Rent” certificate of completion.
I’m actually taking this course myself right now. I wanted to see what this course was all about, and I have learned a lot myself about budgeting and keeping my own finances. Now I have the knowledge to better understand what makes a person qualify for a rental and what makes a successful one.
Also know, that once you get a guest housed you also get a Case Manager that will do regular visitations to ensure that the living situation is going smoothly between the landlord and the renter. We are here to help renters manage their finances and make sure that we do our best for renters to succeed in their new home.
Now! we invite everybody to join our Community Camp Clean-Up! In an effort to maintain local trails and ensure their safety and access for all while mitigating for fire, Hospitality House guests, staff and volunteers will spend their morning picking up debris on Thursday, May 30, 2019. Beautification efforts will take place in Nevada City near the Tribute Trail, which is land owned by C.H.I.R.P. The camp cleanup will be held from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
More volunteers are needed for the cleanup. Contact Naake at 530-798-9817, or email info@hhshelter.org to RSVP. Volunteers will meet at 9 a.m. at Utah’s Place, located at 1262 Sutton Way, Grass Valley, CA. All safety supplies will be provided to volunteers. Breakfast and lunch are included for all participants, as prepared by Hospitality House’s culinary program and gifted from BriarPatch Co-op.
We are hiring! We are currently seeking to fill our Volunteer Manager’s position at Hospitality House. If you want to learn more about this position, please visit hhshelter.org or our Facebook page to apply for this job opening.
This past week, we were blessed by many caring individuals and we are beyond grateful. I’d like to give a big thank you to Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains, Sabine’s Group, Unity in the Gold Country Spiritual Center, Seasoned with Love, Choppers, The Home Team, Grass Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church and Wolf Creek Lodge for coming out to cook. To everyone who donated our most needed items last week, thank you as well!
Now down to the nitty gritty needs of the shelter for this week…
• Men’s pants, sizes 34 – 34
• Men’s T-shirts, sizes L & XL
• Men’s & Women’s sweatpants, sizes L & XL
• Sturdy backpacks
• Blankets
• Flip flops, all sizes
Please drop off urgent items to Utah’s Place, located in Brunswick Basin, past the DMV, at 1262 Sutton Way. For all other donations that may benefit a homeless guest or the shelter in general, please take them to the backdoor of Bread & Roses, our thrift shop, located at 840 E Main Street, directly next door to Sierra Cinemas. Guests at our shelter are given shopping vouchers for the store to buy what they need, so your donation directly helps them. All other items are sold with 100% of the sales supporting the shelter’s operations. Thank you for sticking together so that we all get what we need.