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BRIDGES VILLAGE BUILDS HOUSING THAT CULTIVATES COMMUNITY FOR NATIVE AMERICAN FAMILIES
Native American Homelessness rates are high. The lack of housing creates difficult challenges for families and youth, which only perpetuated the difficulties facing this community. The Frank’s Landing Alesek Institute works to end this cycle by providing homes for Native Americans, with an emphasis on women and children.
“Service delivery is institutionalized through tribes, including housing,” explains Elizabeth Tail, the Executive Director of the Alsek Institute. “People who don’t live on the reservation don’t have access to those housing resources. We work to serve that community.” The Bridges Village project is a significant step in their mission to end homelessness in the off-reservation Native American community.
Ten units provide housing to formerly homeless women, children and families. Most of the residents are single mothers who have escaped situations of domestic violence. The Bridges Village mission is not merely to provide their residents with a safe and comfortable home; it is designed from the ground up to create a strong community within which people can thrive and grow. “We were excited to be a part of this project,” says Jon Clarke, Senior Program Officer at Impact Capital. “It gave us an opportunity to learn about specific needs of the Native American community and work towards a solution that helped fulfill their goals and further the mission of Impact Capital.”
Bridge’s Village empowers and educates individuals and families through a variety of services from counseling for victims of domestic violence, job readiness training and financial education classes, to cultural support services and one-on-one case management. The small scale of the Bridges community is advantageous because it mirrors the size and structure of a traditional village setting. This enables residents to develop community relationships that reinforce the abilities of individuals and families to maintain social networks that promote and strengthen cultural identity and ultimately contribute to the success of the project’s programs and services. Located within blocks of the Takopid Indian Health Service Facility and other Native American community resources, the Bridges Village is in the perfect place to serve its residents and foster community.
In July 2006, Impact Capital granted the Alesek Institute a $50,634 predevelopment loan that provided the crucial first step that the Institute needed — one which no other financial institution would provide. “The project couldn’t have happened without Impact Capital,” said Tail. “They were our predevelopment funder, which is the highest risk… if it weren’t for Impact, we wouldn’t have any of this.” 
Only after the necessary predevelopment appraisals and consultations were completed was the institute able to proceed with fundraising, winning grants from the City of Tacoma, Pierce County, CTED, the Sound Families Initiative and others. By March 1st, they had secured ninety percent of the funding needed to purchase the properties, but none of those grants could close in time to meet a March 30, 2007 deadline required in the property’s purchase and sales agreement. Without the swift action of Impact Capital to provide a short-term bridge loan, all of the Alsek Institute’s efforts would have been in vain and this unique community may never have come into existence.
Lola, a resident of Bridges Village who lives with her son and baby daughter, credits her new home with completely changing her life. Though she was working full-time, she could barely afford rent in a cramped apartment in a bad neighborhood. “Where we lived before was really bad, I could never let my son go outside.” With an unsafe environment like this and an apartment too small, her son’s performance in school started declining. “But now that he’s here, with more kids and a native community to belong to, he’s really blossomed – he’s improved in reading and in everything in school he has excelled.” Their new home has helped Lola’s education as well. More affordable rent enabled her to return to school full-time, where she’ll graduate next year with a degree in business.
“Without the opportunities afforded by Bridges Village, I wouldn’t have made it.”