Hope Housing for Students: A New Partnership for Maryvale
At Maryvale, we believe in evolving our services to meet Los Angeles’ changing needs and act as long-term partners in the community so that we can best serve the populations that need us most. This month, we are proud to kick off a partnership with The Shower of Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring dignity to Angelinos who face homelessness and housing uncertainty. Through our combined efforts, Maryvale and The Shower of Hope will team up to provide safe housing for female community college students whose housing situations are insecure. This project is an extension of the Hope Housing for Students Program. Through it, we will offer fundamental support to help young women achieve academic success and a stable, comfortable lifestyle.
As most residents of Los Angeles know, housing is not guaranteed to anyone. Before the pandemic, LA’s homeless population was already soaring to nearly 42,000 – since COVID-19, we imagine that the number has increased. Housing is a crucial ingredient for physical and mental health. In the case of hard-working, capable young women who are in the process of pursuing adult education, stable, safe housing is critical. Currently, Maryvale is providing housing to seven students who attend a number of different community colleges from East Los Angeles to Pasadena. We plan to double the number of students in our care by the end of 2021. In addition to the housing facilities we are making available at our Rosemead center, Maryvale ensures that every student in the Hope Housing for Students Program has access to the comforts of home and community. We want to offer the best possible conditions for the students we’re hosting to empower them and promote a sense of well-being beyond meeting their basic needs.
Our partners at The Shower of Hope are proponents of restoring dignity to Los Angeles’ homeless community – and we could not agree more with their mission. Having access to temporary housing makes it possible for students facing personal and economic hardship to focus on their academic work and bring confidence to their studies. Our offering goes much deeper than simply offering a bed to sleep in. As with all of our services, Maryvale gives valuable attention to meet each student in our care with the unique support they deserve.
Homelessness Is An Urgent Issue for California’s Students
It is perhaps not surprising that homelessness is often accompanied by a range of psychological and mental health disorders. In addition to causing trauma, distress, and anxiety, people who lack housing are also far more susceptible to illness and addiction issues. As many as 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness each year. While reports vary, there is a significant number of community college students who face housing instability. As many as one in five community college students have been reported homeless within Los Angeles County – and nearly all are Hispanic or non-white. When college-age students face housing instability, their difficulties can be linked to a lack of safe housing or parental support throughout their upbringing. For children, the damage of homelessness can be life-altering, just as adverse childhood experiences introduce a host of physical and mental health risks into a person’s life. A child’s ability to communicate their needs, learn, retain new skills, and develop cognitively is severely harmed when they lack essential physical and mental support. From childhood to adolescence to adulthood, homelessness all too often factors into an abusive cycle that overtakes people and their families. This is especially true for young adults, who are most vulnerable when they become independent without a vision of rising above the hardships their parents faced or without access to the safety, privacy, and comfort they need to imagine and build a healthy life for themselves.
Young adults facing homelessness are likely to have suffered trauma, neglect, sexual abuse, or another domestic disturbance during their upbringing. School expulsion or poor academic environments are also leading contributors to homelessness. To put it another way, when schools fail young people, they are at an increased risk for housing insecurity, making it duly challenging to pursue work. Young adults that muster up the time, courage, and vision to attend community college are not only stepping up to take on skills and launch a career – they are setting themselves up to gain a social network, build community, and grow their curiosity. By creating a dedicated space for young adults at Maryvale, we are breaking a cycle that is fraught with abuse, neglect, illness, and despair. As college students, the young women we are housing have already indicated that they take their personal growth seriously. They want jobs, they want economic mobility, and we want to help boost their success. We commend their ability to rise from vulnerable conditions in search of higher learning, professional skills, and a stable life. As a charity and child services agency that has evolved to meet youth welfare programs throughout our long history, Maryvale is humbled to support these ambitious students.
How Maryvale is Building Hope Through Housing
Maryvale’s holistic approach to personal and educational growth shows up in a number of ways in the Hope Housing program. We provide the students-in-residence with groceries and cooking lessons. Students take turns cooking for one another on a rotating schedule to ensure that everyone feels included, supported, and nourished. We emphasize wholesome foods and healthy eating habits through our grocery selection and cooking classes. We also provide several outfits to each student so that they have clean clothing that is appropriate to wear on a casual basis and in a professional context.
In keeping with our core values, we facilitate one-on-one counseling services for our Hope Housing students through Open Paths Counseling Center and therapy and psychiatric support that Maryvale offers. Our partners at Learn To Be work with students to further their academic performance through one-on-one tutoring sessions.
The enrichment doesn’t stop there. We build bonds among our students through workshop opportunities, activities, and ways to unwind and have fun together. Hope Housing students can deepen their skills through resume-building workshops, character-building classes, and public speaking training. We offer yoga and self-defense classes for fitness and relaxation, and we plan weekly informal gatherings to hang out, watch movies together, sing karaoke, and more.
By serving up a range of opportunities for the women at our center, we hope to grow a sense of purpose, intention, and resiliency.
Hope Housing For Students, Then and Now
In addition, we are thrilled to build upon a proven model. The Shower of Hope initiated the Hope Housing for Students Program this time last year to serve male college students at a different location. Students from East Los Angeles College were provided with housing, and the program’s success led to an expansion to accommodate homeless students at a handful of other community colleges throughout the Los Angeles area. We are grateful to the office of the LA County Supervisor, Hilda Solis, who advised that The Shower of Hope and Maryvale form a partnership. Maryvale is growing this already-powerful initiative by adding additional housing opportunities and broadening the scope to include female students.
Coincidentally, August 2020 saw Maryvale looking to expand our reach in a couple of significant ways. First, we were curious about growing our programs and services to reach more underserved populations in Los Angeles. In addition, we were seeking ways to re-activate the on-campus residential facilities at our Rosemead Center. Hope House for Students creates a perfect center point between our history and our north star vision for the future. Originally, residential offerings were core to Maryvale, which functioned as an orphanage in 1856. In the next century and beyond, we envision deepening our work in transitional housing for prioritized populations. To do this, we will continue to cultivate partnerships, and we are thrilled that The Shower of Hope is bringing us closer to our future vision. We cannot wait to become Los Angeles’s go-to community hub for early childhood education, parenting education, mental health support, and substance abuse programs for children and their families through and beyond this work. As mission-driven nonprofit organizations that serve critical needs in our communities, we are truly stronger together. As one student in our program put it, Maryvale made it possible to “create new bonds with my housemates with whom I share similar interests and who understand the struggles that I have been through. While being a part of this program I have been seen as an individual. This program has given me the time and space to grow and to dream of a future that I didn’t even know was possible.”
If you know a student within Los Angeles’ Community College District whose housing is insecure, please encourage them to apply to this program by completing an application, emailing Maria Granados at hopehousing@theshowerofhope.org, or calling 626-999-1856.
