What If?

There are over 75 million homeowners in the United States.

There are about 3.5 million people who experience homelessness each year.

A large percentage of these homeless are families, children, and U.S. veterans trying to get back on their feet. They are often trapped between their efforts to get help and the systems designed to help them.

What IF it was possible to bridge that gap between homelessness and help?

What IF it was possible to connect a million empty bedrooms, basements, or broom closets with a million people who needed a safe place for the night, for the week, for that in-between time?

What IF instead of starting with a million, we started with just One.

One family hosting and helping another.

A Room At the Inn is our starting point—a scandalous exploration of hospitality. You might think, “well it’s just an idea—a simple suburban garage converted into an apartment for emergency housing.” And you’d be right.

But it’s also more than that. It’s a practical way to defy our cultural bias about homelessness and poverty. It’s an opportunity to experiment with solutions rather than doubts. Most of all, it’s an invitation to engage, learn from, and show mercy to “the Other” (and to ourselves). For us, it’s just a start, and if you’re interested, we could use your help making it a reality.

 

April 2015 ~ Building Update

In the past year, we’ve raised $5,000. We’re so excited with all that we’ve been able to accomplish with it!
Our deepest gratitude to all who’ve donated labor and financial gifts.

               

We have everything we need to get all the electric and plumbing installed.
We have a bathroom door, shower, and a framed in bathroom.
We have a donated water heater and a donated heating/cooling wall unit.
*See below for more details on what all of the above entailed*

What we need now is about $3,500 for the dry wall, paint, flooring, cabinets, sinks, toilet and furnishings.

MAY 15 UPDATE:  $4000 was raised through 2 donors and 2 donation-matching donors!

Our host family has made a number of contacts in the community regarding housing homeless families. They’ve connected with the homeless family liaison for the Edmonds School District and with the Interfaith Family Shelter.

Our goal is that we will be up and running by this summer.
Please help us reach our goal of housing homeless families by this summer by contributing what you’re able to this project.
  All gifts are tax deductible through Church of the Beloved’s secure giving site, Vanco Services. 

Details from our host family on the work so far:

For Plumbing & Electric:
– dug a long ditch on the property
– jackhammered our driveway
– connected water & sewer to our house
– connected electrical to our house
– added an electric panel & installed grounding rods
– jackhammered the cement floor to install plumbing & sewer
– installed sewer pump
– installed shower
– once we have a toilet, kitchen sink, and bathroom sink, plumbing & sewer are ready to connect to those

Bathroom:
– purchased lumber
– put up framing for bathroom walls
– bathroom door is purchased

General:
– installed new window (old one leaking)

How can you help provide A Room At the Inn?

• Help with your funds
  To launch this project we need to make a livable space. We have a room, but we need plumbing, electricity, drywall, heating, and furniture. A contractor friend is donating his time to this project (yea!) We just need money for the materials.

Estimated budget to raise:  $15,000
…but we’re doing it for so much less thanks to our volunteer contractor, plus donations of materials & appliances!
Raised as of May 2015:  $9,000.
Estimated remaining budget to raise:   We have reached our minimum amount needed to continue with building. If you’d like to give, we will certainly put your donations to use once we move into the next phase. More info on that coming soon.

Wanna help? Click to     You’ll be taken to Church of the Beloved’s secure giving page hosted by Vanco Services. You can earmark your tax deductible gift so it goes directly to Room at the Inn.

• Help with your hands
  Are you good with a paintbrush, drywall or shovel? We are enlisting volunteer laborers to keep our start-up costs low.
  Current needs: Concrete worker, mudding/taping, drywall.

Come to our Sunday Morning Work Days ~ We’re out there just about every Sunday Morning
Contact us for the address at tcjohnson74@gmail.com

• Help with your time
  Once we have built A Room At the Inn we’ll need caretakers. Folks who will be willing to invest their time and care into the short-term guests that we are hosting. You might be running errands with our guests, watching their children for an hour, assisting with paperwork and other needs that arise. This is a community project and provides a unique opportunity to connect with others in need. Think about how you fit into this vision. More details to follow…

• Help with your mouth (twitter account & Facebook page coming soon)
  Want to stay informed about this project? Sign up to receive bi-monthly email newsletters. Like our page on Facebook. Tell your friends all about it. It takes a village.

Thanks for your time! We’re pretty excited about this and hope it inspires you, too! Check out our progress as we step out into the beautiful unknown.

P.S. And less we forget, Jesus started out like this, too.