Housing
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How can my giving help to provide and improve housing in struggling neighborhoods and communities?
Housing is often the starting point from which families move toward self-sufficiency. With stable housing, families can more easily find and keep jobs, stay healthy and engage more effectively in children’s schools and upbringing.
What do you need to know about housing? The following links will help break down the components of housing and how your giving can influence this critical community issue.
How do you want to make change? For each housing sub-topic, you can explore five Take Action categories. Each walks you through a specific approach to a housing topic and the ways your giving can make a difference.
Learn More About Housing
Measure the Results
Making a Difference
Frances Hollis Brain Foundation provides for human needs, while bolstering family ties
When David Brain established the Frances Hollis Brain Foundation, his intention was to help people who had not been as lucky as he had. He sought to help others get the “step-up” they needed to improve their own lives. Established after selling a company that provides dental care as an employee benefit, the founder's intentions were broad, but impassioned.
“My father spent his whole life in the insurance field, and late in his career, devised a means to provide low-cost quality dental care using a managed care model. The company prospered; and by the time he sold it, managed care had become a very hot idea.” David's daughter Nancy explains.
“My father is a very hard worker, who feels there are a lot of people who work hard, but aren’t as fortunate as he was,” explains Nancy Brain, who with her sister, Diane Bryant, administers the family foundation. Together, Nancy and Diane have translated their father’s desire to provide people with a “step up” to a giving strategy focused on organizations that provide for “basic human needs.”
By focusing on human needs, the foundation's support has run the gamut from service organizations like Literacy Volunteers and Habitat for Humanity to making bets on new initiatives, aimed at helping disadvantaged people. Read More…
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Facts & Figures
- 1 in 4 working families with children--9.2 million families--are low-income
- Since Sept. 1997, the cost of living has risen 26%, while the federal minimum wage has remained unchanged
- Adults in more than 9 million families (with 19 million children) work regularly but do not earn enough to meet the household’s needs.
- The estimated value of a volunteer's time is $18.77 per hour for 2006
- 84% of low-wage workers do not have access to paid sick days. So, when these workers get sick they are forced to work or stay at home without pay, and risk losing their job
In the News
- Rebuilding and reopening schools in the Gulf Coast means more than just educational opportunities. Schools indicate that communities are coming back and investing in their children's future, even if their location and system has changed a bit. Read More...
- 2009 Poverty Rates Rise for First Time Since 2004 Read More...
- The New Orleans Index: A Review of Key Indicators of Recovery Two Years After Katrina provides comprehensive research and analysis of recovery efforts. Read More...
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