Housing Hope CEO reflects on 25-year career helping unsheltered people
After serving as CEO of Housing Hope for the past seven years, Safstrom announced last week he is retiring from the Everett nonprofit.
When it opened in 1987, Housing Hope set out to find housing solutions for an estimated 6,319 homeless people in Snohomish County at the time, according to Housing Hope’s website. Today, 1,184 people are considered homeless in Snohomish County.
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“But it really became apparent to me that that was not enough,” he said. “At one time, the end goal at Housing Hope was for people to remain stably housed. The end goal today is for them to escape poverty.”
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“People used to believe homelessness was caused by bad choices. Now, people are realizing homelessness is caused by housing costing too much,” Safstrom said. “The real solution is for (households living in poverty) to acquire the tools to generate adequate earned income to escape that poverty and to avoid the negative outcomes.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/housing-hope-ceo-reflects-on-25-year-career-helping-unsheltered-people/
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