Empowerment Center to open, supporting individuals facing housing insecurity

A new initiative is quietly taking shape with the aim of transforming the way the Grinnell community responds to housing insecurity and homelessness. The Empowerment Center, currently under renovation, promises to be a one-stop resource hub for individuals facing challenges related to housing, employment and social services. The center represents a collaborative effort among local organizations, government entities and the community to tackle homelessness head-on and offer long-term solutions to those in need.

The journey toward the Empowerment Center began several years ago, when local community leaders including Kate Slater, executive director of the Grinnell Housing Authority, Jennifer Cogley, director of Partners Program at the Claude W. and Dolly Ahrens Foundation, Sam Carrell, vice president of strategy and rural development at Central Iowa Shelter and Service and various other members in the community, recognized the growing issue of homelessness in the area.

Slater said that the initial goal was to create a unified platform for service providers to share resources and information.

“It was kind of a development over the last couple of years, even before I came on board, out of not necessarily a frustration, but more of a ‘There’s so many people in need,’ and there’s lots of people that can meet those needs,” said Slater. “However, nobody knows what anybody else is doing, or that individual has to go from one place to one place to one place, and it would be better to bring everything together to create more of a hub.”

The center’s primary focus will be on preventing homelessness by offering ongoing support to help individuals navigate life’s challenges before they reach a crisis level. By connecting people to essential services such as housing assistance, job training and financial planning, the Empowerment Center aims to break the cycle of homelessness and create a more resilient community.

“The thing about rural Iowa homelessness is it’s not quite as obvious,” said Carrell. “One of the first things we ran into, which is why I started the conversation with, ‘This isn’t a shelter,’ is because that’s a trigger word for a lot of people, and they think, ‘Well, that’s going to draw the homeless to our community.’ They don’t realize [there’s] already homeless in your community.”

The center has been carefully designed to meet the specific needs of the community, and its success will depend on the continued partnership between local organizations, businesses and residents.

“I think a huge part of this is just the education piece, because even between the committees of myself and other partner programs, we don’t always necessarily know what the other one does,” said Slater. “Enrichment of information and knowing about each other’s resources and how we can contact each other — I think that’s been one of the biggest successes.”

Cogley highlighted how her organization’s efforts fit into this vision.

“The Housing Assistance Fund started in 2020,” said Cogley. “Basically, the fund actually helps with a $500 system max per client per year, and that’s usually not enough to cover that rent, so we usually have to coordinate with other groups in the community to help individuals and to prevent them from becoming homeless.”

Carrell shared that the Empowerment Center will open up in about a month. He said that this center will be the model for the other 15 counties in Iowa that are being served by the committee. Carrell said he hopes that the center will be recognized as a great model for the community, especially as this is the first center that the committee has opened besides the one in Des Moines.

“What we want to accomplish is a much more streamlined approach in the community to address the homelessness issues, the food insecurity issues, and people want to see existing resources without duplicating to really kind of utilize that environment,” said Carrell.