NORWOOD, Ohio — With its high ceilings, natural lighting, and new appliances, Ebony Pratt is eager to see the newest Lydia’s House property on Mill St., welcome its first tenants.
“Maybe the mom can be in here,” Pratt said, walking through the second-floor bedroom. “Or maybe if she has two kids, the two kids can be in here and she can be downstairs.”
In her mind, all great options to ensure the families she works with can move on to a safe, stable, and affordable home.
“It’s a way to help with the transition process and helping them meet certain goals towards those next steps of getting permanent housing,” Pratt said.
Lydia’s House opens its doors to mothers in crisis, providing emergency 30-day shelter to families who may be fleeing domestic violence, facing homelessness, or otherwise unable to find a safe, stable place to live.
Annually, the nonprofit serves more than a hundred guests, helping them find jobs, child care and other resources to get them back on their feet, but one of the hardest and most important factors to resolve is often housing.
“We saw this summer like, with the housing market, it’s just been really rough, especially trying to find landlords that will accept section 8 vouchers,” Pratt said.
Across Cincinnati, Strategies to End Homelessness, the HUD-designated organization behind the local Homeless Management Information System, there were 6,062 people living on the streets or in shelters in 2021, 23% of which were children.
Roughly 77% of the families that seek emergency shelter at Lydia’s House continue on to find stable housing, though that number increases to 83% if they’re able to enter the nonprofit’s transitional housing program and with that, Pratt said mothers are more likely to maintain their jobs and kids can focus on their education.
“It makes a huge difference just being able to have a safe place to lay their head at night,” Pratt said.
Apartments like the four new units on Mill St. are available exclusively to Lydia’s House guests transitioning out of the shelter, where Pratt said they’ll be able to live more independently while still in close contact and proximity to the nonprofit that’s been supporting them. Lydia's House will work with tenants on the rental costs and will accept housing vouchers.
“We do it for up to a three-year program just to help to build rapport, credit, that way we’re able to give their next landlord a good reference,” she said. “To say they paid rent on time, they were clean tenants, things like that.”
Lydia’s House purchased the former bookstore in 2020, spending the past year converting it into multi-bedroom units. Once it opened in October, three units filled up within weeks with its fourth and final unit likely to get its first tenant family by the end of November.
“It’s just very exciting to see it all come together,” Pratt said.
To serve even more families, Pratt said Lydia’s House is aiming to get 16 affordable housing apartment units running in the near future. These four bring the nonprofit’s current total to eight.
“I just think it’s very important as far as having reliable, safe, stable housing, especially for single moms that have young children,” she said.