Group gets promising new facility

PALMER — Family Promise Mat-Su had been open all of half a day in its new home when its first new client arrived Monday afternoon.

The client needed help making rent.

“That’s the other part of our services that we’re offering,” Family Promise Mat-Su Director Laurie Kari said.

The program mostly serves families with children in need of temporary housing, she explained, but with a grant from Valley Charities, the organization has been able to offer “homelessness prevention” in the form of rental assistance.

Between those programs and their help with Social Security and other social programs, Family Promise has steady work serving Valley clients.

Kari said that the new facility, across from Wonderland Park in the former Rosa House shelter, property of Alaska Family Services is very exciting.

“We’re hoping that this will be our permanent home,” she said. “We’re hoping for an option to purchase.”

Not only is the rent significantly cheaper, but the place is bigger. It has two rooms that can sleep four people each and be used as part of the Family Promise program. There’s also a big commercial-style kitchen, a day room and enough office space for Kari and her two and a half office staff members.

The way Family Promise works — and will continue to work — is that it puts families in churches, living in Sunday school rooms and other parts of church buildings while they work on getting more permanent homes.

“People usually take about 30 days to transition out to permanent housing,” Kari said.

That setup offers room for about 15 people, she said. This new facility gives them room for eight more.

It’s overflow space, she said, but it’s also a place where churches that aren’t set up to take in families can still help. Family Promise would invite them to bring their families and volunteers to the new facility.

That’s just one of the many possibilities Kari sees in the new place. She’d like to start partnering with other homelessness organizations. Family Promise has a niche helping families with children, but there are other homeless populations out there. No one is serving single people. There’s limited space for homeless people with substance abuse or mental health problems.

And she wants to maybe restart a free after-school lunch and tutoring program. They had one in their old location on Knik-Goose Bay Road, but it wasn’t exactly a convenient spot.

Now, across from Wonderland Park, she thinks Family Promise might have better luck.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.