Hope Village in Bradenton gains $350,000 grant from Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation
Single mothers and fathers with minor children will soon be getting help with supportive housing in part because of a grant from Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation to Help To Home Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to helping parents threatened with homelessness.
Barancik Foundation’s recent $350,000 grant to Help To Home is the largest to date for the construction of Hope Village, a community of 53 homes on 30th Avenue West between 14th and 26th Streets West in Bradenton. Construction is scheduled to begin late this year on the first 16 homes and the remaining 37 homes will follow about a year later.
“This is a wonderful grant by Barancik Foundation. We greatly appreciate their sensitivity to the housing crisis in our area, which is especially severe for low-income families,” said Rod Urban, Help To Home board president.
Help to Home will use Hope Village to provide temporary supportive housing at below market rents while also requiring residents to participate in life skills development. The program is open to parents with minor children experiencing or threatened with homelessness.
“In many cases, those threatened by homelessness are also experiencing barriers to education, employment, food, transportation, and more,” Barancik Foundation president Teri A Hansen said. “One of the things that sets Help To Home apart is its approach to empowering families to become self-sufficient. They are truly supporting families holistically, by helping to remove barriers and improve quality of life, which in turn, is strengthening the greater community.”
Many low-income families live one illness, one car repair bill or one other unexpected financial event away from homelessness. Hope Village gives them two years of stable, low-rent housing while improving their life skills in order to get better-paying jobs. The residents are expected to move at the end of two years into other market-based housing.
Help To Home has operated four duplex units for the past eight years while developing this program to help families. The creation of Hope Village is a major expansion of their current program of helping parents with children.
The Barancik Foundation creates initiatives and awards grants in the areas of education, humanitarian causes, arts and culture, the environment and medical research. For information visit, baranckfoundation.org.
Submitted by Carol Whitmore
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Hope Village for struggling families in Bradenton receives major grant
