$300,000 County Grant Helps Program Purchase First Freestanding House
By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Madeline Glenn was a 17-year-old senior at St. John's College High School, a private Catholic school in the District, when she got pregnant.
Glenn knew she wanted to keep her baby -- neither abortion nor adoption was an acceptable option to her -- but she also wasn't ready to give up on the plans she had for herself, like someday going to college. When she turned 18, though, her parents told her it was time to take responsibility for her choices in life. She had to leave home and fend for herself and her coming child.
Enter Elizabeth House, an Arlington residential program for homeless adolescent mothers and their children. At five months pregnant, Glenn moved into a subsidized Arlington apartment run by the nonprofit group, which is operated by Borromeo Housing Inc., founded 20 years ago by a group of parishioners from St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church.
Now Glenn is studying for an associate's degree in marketing at Northern Virginia Community College to become an event planner. She hopes one day to open her own event-planning business. She and her now 1-year-old daughter, Marie Claire, still live in the two-bedroom apartment provided by Elizabeth House, along with another young mother and her 2-year-old daughter.
"It's a great program," said Glenn, who has been in the program since the end of 2006 and plans to stay through 2009. "It gives a young woman an opportunity to be an individual, raise her child, and go to school. You have to be looking to better yourself, though. They want to see you succeed."
Arlington County recently awarded Borromeo Housing a $300,000 Community Development Block Grant to buy a house in South Arlington that would double the number of young women and children housed. At present, the group can accommodate four mothers and their children in a pair of rented two-bedroom apartments.
"By the end of the year, we're going to be able to house four more families and acquire our first property, all in the same fiscal year," said Joy Myers, executive director of Borromeo Housing. "That's huge growth for us. It's been a long time coming, though."
The four-bedroom house off Columbia Pike, which will be ready for occupancy in September, was bought with the help of various funding sources. The grant from the county was used as part of the down payment, supplemented by $30,000 in private donations. The rest was financed through a traditional mortgage.
"They leveraged the public money very efficiently," said Jane Eboch, community development coordinator in Arlington's Department of Community Planning and Housing Development.
She said that before Arlington's County Board awarded the competitive grant, it considered the group's track record, its ability to manage the program and the fact that it assisted an underserved population. Eboch said Borromeo first approached county officials two years ago with the idea of buying a property. The county advised the group to come back when it had found a suitable Arlington property, which it did last year.
"Their program really moves the young women to self-sufficiency," Eboch said. "The County Board took into account the excellent work they've done."
The Elizabeth House program is simple: It's for homeless adolescent girls from 16 to 20 who have decided to keep their babies -- and who want to set personal goals, particularly educational ambitions. The group usually takes in young women during their second trimesters, after they have decided to become parents. They can stay in the program two to three years.
The young women live in the apartments, paying a minimal fee. Glenn pays $132 each month for her share of the apartment, money she receives through public assistance. House rules are strict -- there's an 8 p.m. curfew during the week and an 11 p.m. curfew on the weekends. No male visitors are allowed.
"It's a holistic program," Myers said, to "invest in yourself in the trajectory of your life and your child's life." Counselors help the women set goals, such as getting a General Educational Development diploma, learning a trade or studying for an associate's degree at a community college. They also teach parenting skills and provide a support system.
"It's a different approach," Myers said. "A lot of organizations try to help the person get stabilized. We help them get success and find a future."
The national teen pregnancy rate decreased by nearly one-third from 1991 to 2006, but it hasn't been an unbroken line. The teen birth rate increased by 3 percent from 2005 and 2006, the first increase in 14 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Elizabeth House can house an average of about 10 women and 10 children a year, Myers said. The group can help an additional 20 to 25 families a year with outreach services, usually in the form of cash, diapers, formula, counseling and referrals.
Although the group was founded by a Catholic organization, Myers said, "there's no proselytization, and 98 percent of our girls don't attend church." She said almost 90 percent of the young women who leave the program remain independent, with almost 90 percent landing a job that pays more than $30,000 a year. Fewer than one in 10 has another unplanned pregnancy, she said.
Joslynn Hairston, 18, and her daughter, Diamond, live upstairs from Glenn in the other apartment rented by the group. Hairston became pregnant when she was 14 and a seventh-grader at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
Hairston is also studying at Northern Virginia Community College, to be a dental assistant. Then she hopes to enter the school's dental hygienist program.
"They keep you on top of your game here," she said of Elizabeth House. "They don't let you mess up."
Hairston, who bounced between foster homes before entering the program, said that living at Elizabeth House "is like you've got a family around you all the time. Not just the people you live with, but the people who work in the program, too."
Diamond Hairston is the leader of the children, Hairston said, the 4-year-old pied piper that other kids follow. And Hairston and Glenn have become fast friends, too.
"That's my homie downstairs," Hairston said of Glenn. "We share a lot together."
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