Day of Caring project readies a home for the homeless

Hundreds of volunteers rolled up their sleeves and worked up a sweat Friday during the United Way of Northern Shenandoah Valley‘s (NSV) annual Day of Caring.

“We’re pretty excited,” said United Way NSV CEO Andy Gail. “We have over 1,000 volunteers going to 75 different projects across our region — the city of Winchester and Frederick, Clarke, Warren, Shenandoah and Page counties. That’s more than last year.”

One of the 75 projects was in a quiet, residential neighborhood in Winchester, where Day of Caring volunteers from the Thermo Fisher Scientific manufacturing facility near Middletown partnered with representatives from the Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) program to help people escape homelessness.

“This is my first time doing it,” Thermo Fisher machine operator Madelin Guevara said about volunteering for Day of Caring, noting that she signed up because she felt compelled “to help out the community.”

Guevara and her Thermo Fisher coworkers focused their efforts on a small, single-family house hidden behind a row of very tall hedges. It was the WATTS Transitional House, which was purchased two weeks ago by a private group called 143 Transformations on behalf of WATTS.

Clay Perry, vice president of the WATTS board of directors and head of 143 Transformations — 143 is code for “I love you,” with “I” having one letter, “love” having four and “you” having three — said he felt compelled to buy the house so he and his partners could help WATTS guests who are experiencing homelessness get off the streets and regain their independence.

“Landlords are not taking risks anymore, so unless you’ve got an excellent credit rating and a good rental history and no criminal background, they don’t want to rent to you,” Perry said.

“There’s nothing more frustrating for us than when we have working and sober guests who are doing everything [right and] there’s no place to move them,” added Robyn Miller, executive director of the WATTS program based in Winchester. “So in the end, after they’ve done all this hard work, they’re still homeless.”

Perry and his partners in 143 Transformations decided to help by creating the WATTS Transitional House, where up to three employed people who utilize WATTS can share a house with discounted rent.

“There are special stipulations in the lease agreement that say, because you are a WATTS guest or part-time staff, then you get reduced rent,” Perry said. “We’re not doing a background check, we’re not doing a credit check, we’re not doing any of this other stuff.”

Each resident of the WATTS Transitional House will pay $500 a month to live there. The goal, Perry said, is for the residents to reestablish or build their credit while saving up enough money to buy a car and move into traditional housing.

“It’s giving them a place to live where they’ll be safe,” Miller said. “They can keep their jobs, they can keep their sobriety and they can pay off [debts] until they’re well established, then we can look for somewhere else for them to move that’s more in their price range.”

There is no hard and fast rule on how long tenants can remain in the WATTS Transitional House, but Perry said that’s a secondary concern. He’s more focused on ensuring that renters will remain committed to improving their living situations and, eventually, get their own places.

Friday’s Day of Caring couldn’t have come at a better time for the WATTS Transitional House. That’s because its first two residents were moving in that day.

One of the new tenants is Travis Ryan, who signed his lease on Friday morning.

Ryan had a rough go of things in recent years, which eventually led him to the Winchester Rescue Mission‘s homeless shelter on North Cameron Street.

“Once I got out of the Rescue Mission, I was living in a motel and that’s not healthy,” he said.

Ryan then needed surgery to remove his gall bladder, so any money he managed to save from his tree-trimming job was wiped out. He turned to WATTS for help and ended up getting a part-time job at the nonprofit. Thanks to his full- and part-time jobs, Ryan managed to regain his footing enough to purchase a pickup truck he lovingly refers to as “Henrietta.”

Day of Caring volunteers on Friday wanted to make sure the WATTS Transitional House was in tip-top shape before they started filling the dwelling with furniture.

“Mostly what we’re doing today is a lot of yard work,” Perry said on Friday morning. “
We’ve got some contractors doing some interior stuff — replacing the windows and getting the basement all cleaned up because it was kind of mucky down there. They’re going to put up dry lock and seal the basement to keep the humidity out of there so it will be a nice basement where they can put a washer and dryer.”

Many of the furnishings delivered to the house on Friday were courtesy of Mover Dudes at 1520 Commerce St. in Winchester. Jon Eye, who has owned the moving business since 2006, said he has two storage facilities filled with furniture and other household items that were donated by customers.

“Then it goes to a good place” such as the WATTS Transitional House, Eye said.

The WATTS house was just one of several Winchester-area project sites that benefitted from Friday’s Day of Caring. Gail said volunteer workers also helped make improvements requested by the Henry and William Evans Home for Children Inc., the Virginia Tech memorial garden in Sherando Park, the nonprofit Selah Theatre Project, Friends of Old Town, the Winchester and Frederick County parks and recreation departments and many more.

“We called all our friends and said, ‘Hey, we have so many volunteers, how can we help you?'” Gail said. “If a nonprofit needed teams, they got them today.”

To learn more about United Way NSV and its annual Day of Caring, visit unitedwaynsv.org.

Christina Strother of Strasburg, an employee of Thermo Fisher Scientific in Middletown, volunteers on the United Way’s annual Day of Caring on Friday to clear overgrowth in the backyard of a home in Winchester recently purchased by a partnership with WATTS for its transitional housing program.