The wait for transitional housing in Mason County is five to seven years. I get impatient when my pizza order at Old School Pizza takes more than five to seven minutes. Imagine waiting five to seven years for something as important as a roof over your head while you try to get back on your feet.
Let’s back up here. You might be asking, what is transitional housing?
“Transitional housing programs play an important part in many communities as they aid people struggling to get back on their feet. Some serve homeless populations while others cater to run away teens or recently released prisoners. Participants in transitional housing programs are given a place to reside while they find a job and develop the life skills required to live independently,” says ehow.com writer Abby Hall.
I can tell you the St. David’s Episcopal Church is looking for donations of socks and razors to hand out at the place where they provide hot showers for the homeless or that Turning Pointe is looking for dishes, linens, towels, anything you need to start a household…
But that’s not going to help the core problem here, which is going to take some “outside of the box” thinking. Check it out. The popular website ehow.com shows how to start a transitional housing program in 9 steps and rates the level of difficulty as moderate.
So you could get your church group or service club to hold a supply drive or you could challenge them to use the brain power the good Lord gave them and leverage their resources to solve a community issue that no one has tackled yet. You can help people in your community make the transition to living on their own by learning how to start a transitional housing program.
People are waiting for you to lead….and even if it takes you four years to figure out a solution, that’s still shorter than the current waiting list...