Housing Hope, United Way would be effective team

Published 1:30 am Thursday, August 3, 2023

I was so pleased to read the article about Donna Moulton, the new CEO at Housing Hope and her “systems level” approach to dealing with the root causes of homelessness (“Meet Housing Hope’s new CEO, Donna Moulton,” The Herald, July 28). It’s a recognition that homelessness is not just about the inability to afford housing but involves a whole host of interrelated, often complex, pieces of societal shortfalls that together create poverty for too many people.

I would hope that if she isn’t already aware, Donna consider checking in with United Way of Snohomish County and seeing if there isn’t some way that it and Housing Hope might work together in a mutual collaboration that seems to be at the base of how both of these wonderful community support organizations fulfill their missions.

A few years ago United Way adopted the evidence-based societal change model called “collective impact,” which it uses as the basis for its imaginative CORE program, a supported funding approach that is very much a wraparound support program for communities looking to deal with, including other things, generational poverty.

I can’t imagine the power of these two organizations working together toward addressing these complicated issues, working on their root causes rather than the all too often approach we take of funding the effects end of what are inaccurately seen as solutions to our problems.

Jim Bloss

Monroe