The Sophia Way

What I do is not complicated.  I change lives one at a time, starting with my own. If I were to win the Elevate Prize, I would help share my knowledge and experience to inspire others how to replicate what I have done—discover the need, answer the call, and make a difference.

For most individuals, losing their home is traumatic.  Living houseless is a continuation and expansion of that trauma. This award would be used to provide emotional/behavioral support to reduce trauma and provide services to those in need, with the hopes of having 24-hour crisis team to respond—similar to a 911 response without a badge and gun. Additionally, the award would provide the assistance to house more women, such as, rental assistance, eviction prevention, move-in expenses, transitional living, or master leasing of home(s) where women could co-house and receive case management until they were able to live on their own.  

My mission is to match untapped resources with unmet needs. My mother was a professor of Sociology - she taught me that you can study something for a long time, but at some point, you have to move into PRAXIS - doing. When I found out that there were no shelter beds in my community for adult women without children, it made sense to fill that need. Faith communities had room in their buildings at night, community members could provide blankets, meals, and supplies. One woman had an inheritance that she felt called to use for housing. It was a simple matter of organizing and energizing folks who wanted to help and listening to folks who needed help to find out the most effective way to partner. The Sophia Way was the result of that matching of needs and resources, and a powerful catalyst for creating community and care. My goal is to make sure that there are the right resources for each person in crisis, as each person’s needs are different.  

The problem is that people without money are excluded from having a physical space to exist.  Homelessness is dangerous and debilitating. The Sophia Way provides a place to be for women experiencing homelessness by inviting these women into a community, building trust, and meeting their needs. Unsheltered homelessness is a severe problem on the West Coast of the US, with the most recent Point in Time count finding that on the morning of January 24, 2020, there were at least 11,751 individuals experiencing homelessness in Seattle/King County, 446 of them unsheltered in East King County, the region served by The Sophia Way. The trend of housing prices and income inequality make this a looming concern for the entire country, even before the pandemic. The issue is not the lack of housing, but rather the mismatch between the housing people need and what they can afford. The Sophia Way invites women inside, for a shower or a meal, for a night to sleep, for two years in a transitional house, or permanently in a subsidized apartment. The goal is to find appropriate housing that does not exclude anyone based on their ability to pay rent.

With The Sophia Way in the beginning, and Lake Washington United Methodist Church Safe Parking now, I leverage resources that are available but under-utilized, and create a community of care between housed and unhoused people, which builds a coalition to advocate for change. By creating an environment where folks can meet each other as human beings, trust can be built, prejudices disarmed, and myths busted. One of the challenges of providing services to people experiencing homelessness is the dual problem of NIMBYism (housed people not wanting to see poverty) and the lack of trust poor people have of systems that often de-humanize, demean, and retraumitize (unhoused people not wanting to be seen). Relationship building is the slow, incremental work that transforms people, and eventually, communities, and the world.  It starts with a simple "yes". Let's work together.   Let's get to know each other.  Let's learn and help each other.  When we started hosting unhoused people in our suburban, wealthy, single-family home neighborhoods, there was resistance and fear.  Now, there is welcoming and understanding.  

When people come to The Sophia Way, or Safe Parking, whether they are clients, donors, volunteers, or staff, they encounter an environment free of judgement. They are able to relate as people of inherent worth who can collaborate on a challenge. In Safe Parking, people who live in cars and people who live in houses work together to provide shared food, grow vegetables, and weave a welcoming community for all. Housed folks are in need, and unhoused folks can meet those needs, as well as vice versa. By emphasizing community building and acceptance, we create a space that is sustainable and useful, and can continuously be shaped by the evolving needs of those who use it.   We housed folks have a lot of work to do to earn trust, to make ourselves truly useful, and let go of our preconceived notions.   The housed folks who interact with these programs are fundementally changed by the relationships they build, and because housed folks have disproportionate financial and political power, that change can impact how systems work.