EDITOR’S NOTE: For 27 years, Peninsula Daily News readers in Jefferson and Clallam counties have supported the “hand up, not a handout” Peninsula Home Fund.
Today, we feature another in a series of articles on how the fund operates and who benefits from our readers’ generosity.
To donate online by credit card, visit https://secure.peninsuladailynews.com/homefund.
PORT TOWNSEND — “It was a nightmare” is how Dawn Madary describes the living conditions she and her daughters have endured for the past three years.
“If not for the Home Fund’s help, we’d still be living in that dark hole,” she said.
The Peninsula Daily News’ “hand up, not a handout” Peninsula Home Fund provided the family with a voucher to help pay for a security deposit on a new home.
Their plunge into darkness began after a divorce; Madary was left to raise two teenage daughters, Makaylah and Sienna, alone.
Despite her job working full time as a cook in a local restaurant, she didn’t earn enough to keep them living in their home. They became homeless and began living in her car.
“I cried a lot when we were homeless,” she said. “It’s hard to explain to your kids how we could be homeless when I still worked.”
Months passed until she found the “cheapest place in town to rent and jumped at the chance to live there, even if it meant paying $600 a month to live in a dilapidated mess.”
“The entire house was falling apart, literally,” said Madary, 42.
The first time they walked through the front door, she said they were “nearly knocked over by the stench, and it didn’t get much better.”
She described the property as having “piles of junk and garbage everywhere,” and inside was full of mold, mildew and dirt. The house had evidence of rats.
She said it took her family and the help of her employers, a husband and wife who’ve” become my close friends,” about “two months of hauling garbage and cleaning — scrubbing from top to bottom” — just to make it tolerable enough for them to move in.
And when they did, there was still no floor covering. No refrigerator. No washer and dryer — and the disgusting odor lingered in the air.
“I lived there with a lack of amenities for two years,” she said. “But we were stable, and that’s what I needed.”
Living there, her depression grew, and she was so “miserable, I barely left my bedroom.”
Falls ill
One day, she said she was “in the back of the restaurant cooking away when I started getting sick.”
Days of sickness followed, leaving her feeling fatigued and weak. She suffered from headaches and queasiness.
She went to a doctor, who ordered an MRI and discovered some lesions growing in her brain. Told she probably has a neurological disease, she’s undergoing more tests before learning the final diagnosis.
Her doctor told her the illness probably wasn’t caused by living in the house but that the environment possibly triggered it to flare up and progress more rapidly.
In spite of “deteriorating a lot mentally and physically living in that house,” she’d probably still be living there were it not for receiving notice to vacate because the house was under foreclosure, she said.
“I knew foreclosure was coming soon, but after paying my regular house bills, I just couldn’t save all the money I needed to move before I had to be out,” she said.
She’d never sought help before, but she didn’t want to face homelessness again.
A friend told her “the Community Action place was the place to go to learn if there were any resources available that could help me and my girls.”
Olympic Community Action Programs — OlyCAP — is the Peninsula’s No. 1 emergency care agency serving the entire North Olympic Peninsula, oversees the Home Fund for the PDN, screening the applicants and carefully distributing the funds.
She placed the call and was put in touch with a Home Fund case manager, who helped her “feel optimistic they could help.”
“It took 2½ months of searching until I finally found a nice home,” she said, listing obstacles such as her limited budget and her dog, Rover.
She wouldn’t consider moving into a home where she couldn’t have her dog.
“When I need therapy, I go to him. He is my saving grace,” she said. “And plus, he’s my dog; he’s part of my family.”
When she did find a home, the $700 security deposit on top of first and last month’s rent proved a stumbling block. She called her case manager.
Her heart sank when she was told the fund was almost out of money this year and they “weren’t taking any new applications at this time.
“But then she found her notes from talking with me two months ago, so she told me to come on in,” she said.
After looking over her documentation and medical records, the case manager said OlyCAP wanted to help.
The Home Fund provided $350, and the case manager came up with an additional $350 from another program.
Madary was stunned when she heard the news.
“Any help would have been amazing,” she said. “I didn’t expect or even think it possible they could help with it all, but they made it happen.”
She thought her new landlord would balk at the idea of receiving a voucher instead of cash, but “he had no problem with that voucher. He said money is money, and I was able to move in the next day.”
That was the last week of November. She said within the first few days, she started feeling better — not well, but better — and “everyone around me could tell I was feeling better, too.”
She said she had weighed 316 pounds 1½ years before she started feeling sick and now weighs about 160 pounds.
“I just lost interest in eating,” she said, “which is good, because I needed to lose weight.
“But even though now I look better on the outside I feel really crummy on the inside. I hated being so overweight, but I felt better, had more energy and was happier.
“Now, I’m hoping with this move I’m going to pull out of this and get back to feeling like my old energetic self.”
She said that “being in this home feels so good. I don’t feel broken anymore; I feel almost normal, and that’s all I’ve been striving for.
“I’m an average working person, and I can barely stay afloat.
“If wasn’t for folks donating to the Home Fund, I wouldn’t have been able to get help.”
Hand up
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.
