Home provides new hope for a new year for homeless mothers
 

The first residents of the Catholic Community Services-managed Autumn Leaf House program for homeless mothers and their children in Marysville are (from the left) Teela Hartsinck and her son, Jeremy, 4, and daughter Qayla (not shown) and Jesse Mauer and her daughter, Evana, 2. Photo by John Wolcott

MARYSVILLE
By John Wolcott
 
This new year will be a time of hope and opportunity for the mothers and children who  moved into Autumn Leaf House in Marysville just before Christmas, a year that is already looking much brighter for them than their years of living on the street or flying high on drugs.
“I was on drugs since I was 15, homeless off and on. I was living on the street. I couldn’t have my children with me because they didn’t have a stable environment until now. This is a new start, a new life. I thank God for being here, it makes it possible for me to be with my family,” said Teela Hartsinck, whose son, Jeremy, 4, and sister Qayla, 2, have moved into Autumn Leaf house with her.

Now finishing her drug treatment at Evergreen Manor in Everett, she hopes to “go back to school, then college, get a career job and buy a home for my family,” she said.

For Jesse Mauer, being at Autumn Leaf House after 18 years on drugs and treatment at Evergreen Manor, is “a blessing,” she said, as she held her 2-year-old daughter, Evana.

“I’m grateful. It’s beautiful here. Everything is brand new and nice, even a new bed and comforter. Everyone is so wonderful. This will be my first good Christmas,” she said in mid-December. “Usually, I was high.”

The importance of support

Both women praised Catholic Community Services for opening Autumn Leaf House and for their care and offering programs and services to help them get a new start in their lives.

“We need people’s support,” Mauer said. “If there were no places like this, I wouldn’t have a chance. I want to go to school to get my real estate license, or even be a counselor for people with chemical dependency, to give back some of what I got from Evergreen.”

Joni Dear, the CCS director of housing and services for Autumn Leaf House, Seton House and other housing programs, said “women who come to Autumn Leaf House have been living in shelters or a car or moving from one friend’s house to another. We dedicate ourselves to helping the poor, those in most need who have no other options.”

Autumn Leaf House offers services similar to Seton House, the successful venture for homeless, pregnant women built and supported by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in the Bothell-Mill Creek area and managed by Catholic Community Services.

A partnership venture

Located in the former Quil Ceda House for developmentally disabled persons at 615 Cedar Ave., the Marysville residence is one of the first projects funded by the new Snohomish County Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the new Washington State Operating and Maintenance Fund.

After the Quil Ceda House program outgrew the home, the Housing Authority of Snohomish County bought the property, then offered it to Catholic Community Services (CCS) as a partnership venture to serve the needs of homeless, single mothers with children, including during pregnancy.

Autumn Leaf House is the first phase of a CCS program that moves residents from homelessness to permanent housing, and a new life. Residents will have completed an inpatient drug or alcohol treatment program before being assigned to the new group home. Then they will receive CCS services designed to help them learn everything from parenting to independent living skills.

The next step for the women residents there will be moving to Mercy Corps’ Tree of Life transitional housing, an apartment complex in south Everett, and then to apartments at Timber Hill in east Everett, which the Everett Housing Authority purchased last August for low-income housing.

During their years with the CCS program, the residents receive intensive case management and counseling. Also, CCS provides assistance and training in child care, nutritional cooking, shopping, budgeting, time management, general housekeeping, hands-on parenting, conflict resolution, GED tutoring, job interviewing and job retention – all skills needed for independent living.

The staff and volunteers of Catholic Community Services helped more than 380 pregnancy women and their children over the past year, including residents of Seton House in Snohomish County. Now Autumn Leaf House will extend those outreach services into the north county area.

Funding for the Autumn Leaf program comes from grants and donations from the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Pacific Northwest Giving; Federal Home Loan Bank; Frontier Bank, and Impact Capital. Information about Autumn Leaf House programs is available at 425-257-2111.