Giving Tuesday
...218 days to go...
If you’re emerging from a turkey-induced coma this week like I am and maybe some Christmas shopping, perhaps you’re thinking about a Giving Tuesday donation.
Jen and I contributed $25,000 in matching funds for Mary’s Place’s Giving Tuesday drive. Mary’s Place, as I’ve written previously, is a family shelter committed to the idea that no child should sleep outside. It is a clean, bright, and dignified space for families to get back on their feet. They also provide funds for rent arrears (to keep families in their homes) and security deposits (to help them get into new ones), as well as a plethora of needed services.
Our donation will go specifically toward paying the rent arrears of precariously housed families. While Mary’s Place didn’t want to publicize the average size of their assistance payments, I know from my previous research that providing a one month rent assistance payment can decrease the likelihood of a precariously housed family becoming homeless over a three-year period by around 2.5%. Put another way, on average 40 of these payments will serve to prevent a family from falling into homelessness.
The median rent for a 2-bedroom in Seattle is around $2,500, but we can probably assume many of the families receiving these payments are toward the lower end of the distribution - perhaps $2,000 per month. So the cost to keep a family housed is about $80,000 (40 times the $2,000 payment).
Because the average family size at Mary’s Place is nearly 4 people, this means it costs around $20,000 (one-fourth of $80,000) to keep one individual out of homelessness.
This means our donation will provide the support to keep about 1.25 individuals from becoming homeless.
This Tuesday, we’d love to help Mary’s Place increase that figure to a full 2.5 individuals by completing the full match. Will you help by making a donation to Mary’s Place today??
Please visit Mary’s Place (see link here) to make your donation. It’ll be matched 2x and may just be the difference between a family making it through a tough patch or being tossed out onto the street.
Please post in the comments if you make a gift and we can celebrate together!