March 2022 Nonprofit Spotlight: Homeward Bound

We featured Homeward Bound at the end of last year, and we're doing it again this month. Several of Firefly's team members recently took a tour of Homeward Bound's Home is Key facility. Through grants and private donations, the nonprofit dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness in our community through permanent housing and support purchased an old Days Inn motel in east Asheville, and is repurposing it to  provide 85 efficiency apartment units to the community's most vulnerable homeless population. In addition to housing, there will be supportive services available with partners including Sunrise Community Wellness & Recovery, Haywood Street Congregation, Appalachian Mountain Centers/Dale Fell Clinic, and others.

This initiative comes after years of studying the community need for stability, safety and improved quality of life for the chronically homeless in our community. The organization has been operating a smaller-scale permanent supportive housing residence for the last 4 years, with a 90% success rate. 

Homeward Bound also has an easy way for real estate agents (and their clients) to give back. The REACH fund (Real Estate Agents Combating Homelessness) is a way for agents to donate money for each commission earned. Firefly is excited to get on board with this fund and continue the relationship with Homeward Bound in ways that we can make a meaningful difference for  the un-housed members of our community. 

Homeward Bound has been using the Housing First model since 2006. Housing First is a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness. This approach is guided by the belief that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything less critical, such as getting a job, budgeting properly, or attending to substance use issues.  Since 2006, Homeward Bound has housed more than 2,200 people with an 89% retention rate. They attribute their success to the supportive services they offer that accompany the housing and having a trained, compassionate and nonjudgmental staff who care about the people they serve.