Help & Hope

With its status as the agricultural hub of eastern Washington and western Idaho, a vibrant manufacturing sector, major universities, a military installation, a skilled workforce and, maybe most importantly, home prices that had appreciated but not at the almost astronomical rates seen in San Francisco or Las Vegas, a lot of folks in Spokane were hopeful Washington state's second largest city wouldn't be battered by the Great Recession of the last couple of years.

No such luck. Just like almost every other place on the planet, Spokane wasn't immune. It was hit. And hard.

Ask the Spokane Neighborhood Action Program - S.N.A.P. - the metropolitan area's largest, not-profit social services agencies. Last year, it helped nearly 50,000 people, up a third from a year earlier. "Half of those served," reported Kevin Graman of The Spokane Spokesman Review, "were new clients who had never sought assistance before."

People like Carrie Emery, a 46-year-old single mother, who'd as a health care unit coordinator for a local hospital. Facing its own budgetary pressures, the hospital cut her hours from 34 to 28 a week. It made all the difference. "She could no longer make ends meet," Graman wrote.

She sought help from SNAP. Under the American Recovery Reinvestment Act of 2009, the City of Spokane received some $1.5 million in Preventing Homelessness and Rapid Re-Housing funds provided by the Congress and President to "to either prevent individuals and families from becoming homeless or help those who are experiencing homelessness to be quickly re-housed and stabilized." To get help to those in need, the City has partnered with SNAP, Catholic Charities, Volunteers of America and the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium in a new Moving Forward program to get help to those in need in Spokane.

Ms. Emery received "more than she'd hoped for," reported Graman. "They paid my rent for a couple of months and my Avista and water bill, as well as my car insurance," she said. "It was really a blessing and helped me get on the right track again."

Or consider Mike and Dawn Payton and their four kids. He became unemployed because of a back injury. They found themselves "slipping deeper into debt trying to survive on unemployment compensation. For the first time in their lives," they sought help. "The Moving Forward aid they got," said Mr. Payton, "meant the difference between us staying in our home or living in a hotel or out in our truck,"

To date, Spokane's Moving Forward program has helped almost 110 families from becoming homeless using the Recovery Act funds, most of them the "newly poor" like Ms. Emery or Mr. and Mrs. Payton. Unfortunately, Jennifer Martin of SNAP told Graman, "there are more people eligible for the emergency assistance than there is money to help them."

Moving Forward, said Dan Jordan, SNAP's director of community services, has become "a significant safety net that has reduced homelessness, saved many from foreclosure and provided efficient living units that save energy and money."

"Ditto," said the editorial board of The Spokesman Review a couple of days after Graman's article appeared "Thousands of people in the region are living on the edge, even those with jobs. It's in our community's best interests to prevent them from falling into despair. Federal stimulus spending has come under a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. But routing temporary funds through agencies like SNAP is smart and compassionate." And, maybe most importantly, Jordan said, it's helped "stimulate hope" among many at risk of losing it.

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