Monday, June 21, 2021
By Andrew Janssen, CVPost
Affordable housing here received a $59,000 boost Monday when JONAH and its Affordable Housing Task Force (AHTF) received grants from the Pablo Foundation and the Eau Claire Community Foundation.
JONAH (Joining Our Neighbors, Advancing Hope) will use a $56,000 grant from the Pablo Foundation to support the creation of an Eau Claire Tenant Landlord Resource Center (EC-TLRC), and $3,000 from the Eau Claire Community Foundation to create a website for the center. The EC-TLRC will begin operations in August, in office space at Grace Lutheran Church, 202 W. Grand Ave.
In 2018 the AHTF identified the need for services that help provide access to safe, affordable housing and to assist both tenants and landlords to maintain positive and sustaining relationships.
Susan Wolfgram, co-chair of the task force, said “decent, safe, and affordable housing should be a basic right for everyone in this country. The home is the center of life and without it, everything else falls apart. It is our mission to intervene early between tenants and landlords to preserve, stabilize, and sustain the sacred space of ‘home’ for families.”
The new center will start by developing a website to provide information and resources for tenants and landlords. Future services will include tenant education and training volunteers to provide preventive eviction intervention and mediation between tenants and landlords.
MaiVue Xiong, Executive Director of the Pablo Foundation, wrote in the letter awarding the grant that “JONAH’s success in the creation of an Eau Claire Tenant Landlord Resource Center to improve housing stability for renters and mitigate risks for landlords in the Eau Claire area is a success for all, and we are happy to help out in any way we can to achieve this goal.”
Judi Mosely, co-chair of the AHTF, said the task force is “excited to collaborate with other community agencies to provide these much needed services to our community.” She thanked both foundations for believing in the mission of the AHTF and for providing the startup funding to launch the project.
Wolfgram added that “one eviction can change the trajectory of an individual or a family’s life and multiple evictions in a community are destabilizing. Early intervention between tenants and landlords, before the word ‘eviction’ is even spoken, benefits everyone.”
The Pablo Foundation was founded here in 2017 with the mission to create a model for a healthy and sustainable community. The Eau Claire Community Foundation, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, is a major community resource promoting philanthropy, collaboration and innovation.
NOTE: More information is available from Susan Wolfgram or Judi Moseley.
The homepage photo was provided by JONAH. It shows, from left to right, Judi Moseley, Susan Wolfgram and Paul Savides, all members of JONAH’s Affordable Housing Task Force.