July 2023 Newsletter
Northwest Hospitality serves our unhoused neighbors in a variety of ways through several unique programs. This month, we are highlighting our proposed Safe Parking Network.
The Safe Parking Network aims to serve people who are living in their vehicles by providing them a safe place to park. People living in their vehicles often spend much of their time hiding and moving. When provided with a safe parking space, these folks can spend more of their time improving their situation instead of trying to avoid detection.
Locations that would participate in this network include churches, community centers, marketplaces, and other public spaces with at least 1-3 legal parking spaces to offer to this program. Participating locations would receive support from Northwest Hospitality including at least one volunteer advocate responsible for communicating between locations and participants to ensure concerns are addressed and resolved, supplies such as portable toilets, trash receptacles, and extension cords, and participant agreement forms with pictures of vehicles and people using the parking spaces.
Benefits of the safe parking network:
Safe, peaceful parking for people with nowhere else to go
Environmental benefits: more people using appropriate bathroom facilities, litter clean-up, and reduced engine time of participants will benefit the environment
Participating locations know who is staying on their property.
Positive relationships can be built between people living in their vehicles and NWH volunteers. These relationships help connect people to resources and help move people into housing.
Many places around the country provide safe parking for people while connecting them to resources. Often, this is done at a single location resulting in overburdened local resources, community complaints, litter, and other challenges.
The safe parking network developed by Northwest Hospitality networks public spaces and small businesses to provide all the benefits of Safe Park programs with fewer drawbacks. With a large network of available spaces, we can serve our neighbors without overburdening any single location.
Can you help?
We are recruiting partner locations with 1-2 parking spaces to commit to this program.
We are recruiting a volunteer who would like to help us move this project forward.
You can learn more about this program by reading the Proposal and Participant Agreement. Email anton@nwhospitality.org if you have suggestions for possible locations or want to participate!
Excerpt from Galena’s article:
“When the pandemic started, the mountains of suffering in the world drove me to social action again. I attended BLM rallies and tried to start an organization to match people who were made homeless by losing their jobs to COVID, to people who could temporarily host and house them for free (it didn’t work out). I focused on educating myself about housing issues, while taking advantage of the new political energy toward antiracism and attending as many free antiracism Zoom seminars as I could.” Read more…
In case you missed it…
Upcoming:
Bremerton Community Farmers Market - NWH will be there August 10th
Stop by and see us. 😎
Annual Benefit - November 4th, Early Support Tickets available now!
Thank you to everyone who supports our work of helping those in our community that are experiencing homelessness or unstable housing. We couldn’t do any of this important work without your support.
Ways to get involved
Volunteer - nwhospitality.org/volunteer
Donate Funds - nwhospitality.org/contribute
consider becoming a monthly supporter!
Donate Items - Contact us for our current needs or check out our Amazon Wishlist