Breaking cycle of homelessness
Author: William Hermann, The Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ)
Malessa Solenne wept for joy Friday as Dale Phillips, president of Mark-Taylor Residential, handed her the keys to the apartment she will live in rent-free for the next year.
Solenne, 23, knows what it is like to have no place to call your own, no place where she and 2-year-old daughter Alexxis could live. She was homeless before Mesa-based Save the Family reached out to change her life with classes, job training in cosmetology and an apartment from Mark-Taylor.
She'll live in a two-bedroom unit in the new 308-unit San Portella development on 55th Street south of Broadway Road in Tempe.
"This means more to me than almost anything I can imagine," Solenne said. "It means I can live in a regular way. It means I can build my clients in my cosmetology work without having to worry if I have enough money for rent.
"It means Alexxis and I will have a place to live."
Mark-Taylor is involved with significant community outreach, Phillips said, and last year placed another homeless young woman in a Chandler apartment.
"We think this is an important way we can help," he said. "It's not a handout, it's a hand up and allows people to rebuild their lives. It's a year to get themselves established in a rent-free, fully furnished apartment -- dishes, too."
Janice Parker is executive director of Save the Family, a non-profit organization that she founded 20 years ago.
She said that last year, Save the Family placed 278 families in homes and over the past two decades "probably about 2,000 families" have been helped.
"We want to help families, and I particularly want to help the children," Parker said. "Children should have a better chance in life than being homeless. And what is vital is that we break the cycle of homelessness."
"We're moving in Monday, and I'm so excited I can hardly talk," she said.
Copyright© The Arizona Republic. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc. Record Number: pho97709913