REACH News

April 2023

Housing is a Human Right

Upcoming Events

• Advocacy Team Discussion, the first Wednesday of each month at 4:00 PM on Zoom
• Project Haven Volunteer Orientation, monthly on the last Friday at 8:00 AM or 4:00 PM in person

Click a link and send an email to learn more and register to attend.

Meet Our Guest

Deanna is a recent guest at Project Haven. She came to Rochester to continue her healing journey at Strong Ties. She has now been clean for thirteen months. Deanna, age 44, spent most of her life fighting depression and escaping into some form of addiction.

As a very young girl, her father raped her, and as a teen, she was coached into prostitution by her mother to “help pay the rent.” Her mother also struggled with addiction, and eventually, Deanna was farmed out to various family members.



Deanna has three children. The eldest, Amanda, is not speaking with her. Her son, Matthew, was adopted by a family member at birth, and while she talks with him occasionally, he does not know her as his mother. Deanna is working on forming a closer relationship with her youngest, Chelsea.

Project Haven News

Each month we publish a list of items needed by REACH/Project HAVEN for each of our shelter sites. Your donations are invaluable in both supplementing our budget and providing things that we cannot. As always, the REACH shelter team and Haven guests appreciate all you do for us.

Edgerton Meadows Updates

As the team continues to work through the approvals with the City and finish funding for Phase One, we will update readers with significant milestones. We don’t want you to forget about us, so we will devote our newsletter section to the information we share with funders when we apply for grants. These numbers keep us motivated as we learn more about the dire situation in Rochester.

The US Census Bureau reported that the Area Median Income (AMI) for Monroe County in 2021 was $66,317. Households with extremely low incomes (up to 30% of the AMI) have at most $19,895 or $1,658/month. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s Gap Report found that over 42,494 Monroe County households had extremely low incomes, yet only 11,279 rental units are available at their price point.

Only three solutions exist for the remaining 31,215 households who aren’t lucky enough to have affordable rent. 75% of these households solve the problem by spending half or more of their monthly income on housing. Another 20% spend one-third to one-half of their monthly income on housing, and 5% or 1561 households are unhoused.

Advocacy Notes

We canceled our April meeting due to a lack of attendance. Key people have been contacted, and wish to stay on the team, so we will now meet on the first Wednesday of each month. For the time being, we will meet via ZOOM. During the next few months, we will be exploring how we can promote the lived experiences of people experiencing homelessness in our community as a way to demonstrate the systemic issues around housing. If you would like the link to our meeting, please email info@reachadvocacy.org.

What We Are Reading

Do you ever wonder about the lived experiences of people experiencing homelessness? Here is an excellent series from the NY Times: What Don’t You Know About Homelessness? Be sure to click on individual stories after reading the introduction. If you get lost, go to What’s Homelessness Really Like?

What We Are Watching

National Low Income Housing Coalition’s panel: Homelessness is a Housing Problem: Best Practices in Housing First. If you do not have time to watch the entire video, skip to 38:55, where you will meet Claudine Sipili, a person who experienced homelessness, and is now the director of lived experience and innovation at Destination Home. Her dramatic ending is passionate and moving.

Exciting Opportunities

Do you want to be involved in furthering housing as a human right? REACH has grown tremendously in the eight years we have been in existence! Our mission has expanded as our small group of volunteers learned that what we once thought was a “homeless problem” was and still is, in fact, a housing problem. Due to our growth, we need more people on some of our teams.

The Development Team needs people who have some development experience or grant writing experience.

The Advocacy Team collaborates in supporting current legislation. We need volunteers who can track current legislation and connect with our collaborators. We also want to share the voices of people who have lived experience of homelessness and need volunteers to meet and record these narratives.

If interested, please send your contact information to info@reachadvocacy.org and let us know which volunteer opportunity interests you.

Thank you to our readers!

We are grateful for your generous support of REACH Advocacy.

100% of your tax-deductible donations support our mission.