ANACORTES FAMILY CENTER
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Mission Statement
The Anacortes Family Center‘s mission is to serve homeless women, children and families in crisis by providing shelter in addition to comprehensive transformational services to achieve long lasting personal success and self-sufficiency, and to prevent homelessness in our community through advocacy and by providing affordable housing options.
About This Cause
The Anacortes Family Center provides a comprehensive approach to serving women and families with children. AFC creates an individualized plan to help each client reach self-sufficiency, with the goal of ending reliance on social services. Our program includes homelessness prevention, emergency shelter, transformative housing, affordable housing, and support for at-risk youth. Thankfully, AFC has consistently received the distinction of being one of the most successful shelters in Washington State, with over 80% of clients graduating in 60-90-days into a permanent home and a job to support the family. Emergency Shelter Our Emergency Shelter offers a safe place for those in urgent need. 70% of the clients we serve have experienced domestic violence, and 80% face some level of mental health challenge. Intensive case management helps clients identify barriers and set short- and long-term goals and achieve self-sufficiency by the end of a 60- to 90-day program. AFC‘s holistic approach includes access to health care, budgeting, life skills classes, legal assistance, and mental health counseling. Within two weeks of arriving at AFC, adult residents must secure employment. Staff and volunteers help prepare them by identifying their strengths and skills, writing resumes, and practicing for interviews. AFC partners with the community to rapidly match residents with local employers. Finding a job early sets clients on a path toward stable housing outside the shelter. 75 – 80% of AFC residents leave our program with a safe, stable home, and a job to support their family. YOUTHConnect! At-risk Youth Mentoring All too often clients come to us with a background of generational poverty, family violence, and untreated mental illness. AFC is dedicated to ending this cycle through a one-of-a-kind program designed specifically for homeless children and youth. Our comprehensive kids‘ program includes art, music and play therapy, life skills education, and individualized academic and social assistance, including in-school support and after-school tutoring. Children who could benefit from a trusted adult outside the family in their lives can participate in our YOUTHConnect! Program and be matched with a trained mentor. Transitional Housing Some families need more than 90 days to address complex and enduring barriers to stability. These can include a variety of challenges such as lack of a high school diploma, health issues, insufficient savings, and more. Clients with large families or infants can have a difficult time finding childcare, and it‘s no secret that affordable housing can be hard to come by in Skagit County. AFC has chosen to actively tackle these problems in our community – read more about our solutions for affordable housing and our future plans. Clients who have completed the Emergency Shelter Program and would benefit from additional support are eligible for up to two years in our Family Transformation Center. Those families pay 30% of their income as “rent.” When they graduate, AFC returns most of the rent as a grant to secure a lease or mortgage, with any remaining funds held for an emergency. Two of our families have moved from the program into homes they were able to purchase! Affordable Housing With the realization that a communities best long-term strategy to end homelessness is by creating housing that is affordable, even to those with service sector Jobs, is critically important! A few years ago, AFC opened Launch Apartments, 20 units of affordable housing for families making 30 – 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI). This beautiful building features studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units with rents of just a few to several hundred dollars per month, based on the resident’s income and apartment size. In 2023 AFC is excited to open our second affordable housing complex, The Landing. Landing will provide 21-additional units of affordable housing. 5 units will be set aside for income eligible Island Hospital staff that would respond in the event of a catastrophic disaster. The ground floor of this four story building will be master leased to Boys and Girls Club. This exciting partnership will create a desperately needed, licensed early learning center. This program is open to all Fidalgo youth, and will serve approximately 40 children. How is this funded? AFC is nearly entirely funded through local community support. About 1/3rd of our annual operating budget comes from local family or corporate foundations, individual contributions, as well as business gifts (like employer matches) make up roughly 25% of AFC’s operating budget, and roughly a quarter comes from community events. We do receive a small number of competitive local grants from Skagit County and the City of Anacortes. AFC is generally unable to apply for most State or Federal sources of funding.