PORT TOWNSEND — John Allen was at the top of his game when he got struck with a slew of trouble and woes.
In the past five years, Allen’s marriage crumbled, he became a single parent to son Chase and he developed health problems that kept him from working.
After a divorce ended a 22-year marriage, he was diagnosed with a debilitating disease called ankylosing spondylitis (a more severe form of spinal arthritis).
Two years ago, he had a heart attack and a few months ago a stroke. Deliberate speech and slurred words are reminders of that stroke.
He faced eviction until Olympic Community Action Programs and the Peninsula Home Fund stepped in to help.
“The Home Fund was a tremendous help in staying in our home,” said Allen, 42.
Allen and his 10-year-old son are among the nearly 2,700 individuals and families in Jefferson and Clallam counties who’ve been helped by the Peninsula Daily News’ Home Fund this year.
All instances of help are designed to get an individual or family through a crisis — and back on the path to self-sufficiency. Assistance is limited to $350 in a 12-month period.
“I thought I was doing everything right and was living a successful life,” Allen lamented.
“And then my health, my marriage and everything else started falling apart.”
For 16 years, Allen enjoyed his lifestyle as a long-haul trucker who got to see new sights while crisscrossing across the states.
“I loved being on the road and learning new things,” he said.
“I had my own truck and made my own schedule.”
After a month or six weeks on the road, Allen would stay home a week or two to relax.
He was in his 30s when he started experiencing low-back pain. Like most men his age, he tried to ignore it, thinking it “was just from years of long hours sitting in my truck and driving.”
After Chase was born, he decided to take only local jobs to be with his son more.
At the time, he and his wife were living in Eastern Washington, but as a third-generation Port Townsend resident, Allen wanted to move back home to raise his son “in the small hometown as I grew up in.”
They purchased a double-wide manufactured home and set it up on a leased lot in Port Townsend. Not long after, his life started to unravel.
When he needed money for past-due rent for the lot, his mother suggested trying OlyCAP.
The Home Fund was able to assist with $200 toward his past-due rent and $150 to pay his water bill after it was turned off for nonpayment.
The rest of the past-due rent came from other programs that OlyCAP helped him tap.
Allen said the OlyCAP case manager was very helpful.
“She jumped right in and found programs to use and was able to help come up with the other half,” Allen said. “She was amazing.”
“It means everything to me to have help from the Home Fund and the community to stay in my home,” Allen said.
“I didn’t have to ask for help until recently. I thank God it’s there because I just don’t know where I’d be with my son if I didn’t have it.”
Every year, the Peninsula Daily News’ “hand up, not a handout” Peninsula Home Fund provides a safety net for local residents when there is nowhere else to turn.
To continue its success, the Home Fund depends on its compassionate donors delivering hope to thousands of individuals and families, many with young children, who suddenly face an emergency situation and can’t find help elsewhere.
From Port Townsend to Forks, from Quilcene and Brinnon to Sequim and LaPush, the Home Fund helps children, teens, families and the elderly to get through an emergency situation.
Money from the Home Fund is used for hot meals for seniors in Jefferson and Clallam counties; warm winter coats for kids; keeping the heat on, home repairs, clothing, furniture, food, rent and other essentials for a low-income family; needed prescription drugs; dental work; safe, drug-free temporary housing; eyeglasses — the list goes on and on.
The Home Fund is not a welfare program.
The average amount of help is usually below $100; this year has been $70 per person.
No money is deducted by the Peninsula Daily News for administration fees or any other overhead.
Every penny goes to OlyCAP — the No. 1 emergency-care agency on the North Olympic Peninsula — to administer the fund.
Every penny contributed goes to OlyCAP to support our neighbors in need in Jefferson and Clallam counties.
All contributions are IRS tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law for the year in which the check is written.(See accompanying box)
Your personal information is kept confidential.
The PDN does not rent, sell, give or otherwise share your address or other information with anyone or make any other use of it.
Individuals, couples, families, businesses, churches, service organizations and school groups set a record for Home Fund contributions in 2014: $271,981.
With heavy demand again this year, the carefully rationed fund is being depleted rapidly.
Since Jan. 1, the Home Fund has helped nearly 2,700 individuals and households, many with children.
As of Nov. 15, approximately $205,000 has been spent for Home Fund grants.
And as we move into winter, the toughest period of the year, most all of the remaining money — $75,000 — is expected to be spent before Dec. 31.
To apply for a Peninsula Home Fund grant, contact one of the three OlyCAP offices:
■ Its Port Angeles office is at 228 W. First St., Suite J (Armory Square Mall); 360-452-4726. For Port Angeles and Sequim area residents.
■ Its Port Townsend office is at 823 Commerce Loop; 360-385-2571. For Jefferson County residents.
■ The Forks office is at 421 Fifth Ave.; 360-374-6193. For West End residents.
Leave a message in the voice mail box at any of the three numbers, and a Home Fund caseworker will phone you back.
OlyCAP’s website is www.olycap.org; email is action@olycap.org.
If you have any questions about the fund, phone Terry Ward, PDN publisher, at 360-417-3500 or email tward@peninsuladailynews.com.
