Hello, this is Doug from HomesNOW Not later. Sorry, it’s been a while since my last video, the holiday season is always busy and there’s been a lot of stuff going on. I wanted to share some of the highlights though.
Operations at Unity Village continue to go smoothly. With the model of self-governance, the residents of Unity Village have been able to manage their own day to day challenges and operations. I am truly proud of them. I hope that we can keep Unity Village going since it’s clear and obvious that it’s a successful model overall, both in terms of cost, and in terms of results.
The Petition to extend Unity Village is in full swing. We have collected a few hundred signatures but we need every signature we can get. We are asking the City of Bellingham to extend our permit at the current site located at 210 McKenzie Avenue Bellingham WA 98225 past the original April 30th 2020 end date.
Our logic for why, is that this land that Unity Village is sitting on will not be developed for a few years when the wastewater treatment plant expands. Why not let us stay until the land is going to be used for something else? We have included a link to the PDF file of the petition. If you want to print out some petitions and get signatures and get them back to us, that would help us out a lot. At the very least, an extension until the end of summer would allow us to move the structures when the weather is better and allow us more time to move everything in an orderly way.
Once our stay at the Fairhaven location is concluded, we are hoping to move Unity Village to another City site. The next site that we would like to have access to, in order to move Unity Village is the Clean Green site, located at the intersection of Woburn and Lakeway, across the street from the Bay View Cemetery, near the community gardens. This site had previously been used to for the disposal of yard waste, but the program has subsequently been discontinued and so the lot sits empty. In a number of years it is slated to be used for low-income housing development. Until that construction begins, we request that we could use that site for the longest term duration possible.
Petition to extend Unity Village:
Also there is a Fairhaven neighborhood association meeting on January 8th, where the Planning Director of Bellingham, Rick Sepler, plans to update the neighborhood on the status of Unity Village. A few of the residents and myself plan to attend. We welcome anybody else who wants to attend as well. Every voice matters.
When we proposed the Clean Green site a few weeks ago, the city expressed to us that it wasn’t just the city’s job to cater to allowing homeless relief services, such as what HomesNOW provides. I agree that it’s not just their job either, it’s all of our jobs, it’s all of our responsibility as members of the community. The city asked us to communicate with the County about another site before we come back to them with a proposal for a site to move Unity Village to.
Here is a link to the fundraiser:
Whether it’s $1 or $10,000, it all adds up. Let’s end the problem of homelessness NOW! Not Later. In order to successfully pull it off we are going to need funding and volunteers.
If you would like to volunteer, please fill out a form on our website at:
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