North Helpline - Lake City Food Bank, Seattle Washington

North Helpline also refers clients to other area agencies for additional empowerment services.

North Helpline works to prevent homelessness by providing short-term solutions to combat financial adversity such as providing food, baby supplies, eviction prevention and utility shutoff assistance, and move-in support. NHL also offers strategies and resources for resolving financial and personal issues through referrals to community organizations, government programs, and faith-based organizations. NHL taps into and coordinates the generosity of neighbors and community members, treating each volunteer, donor and client with dignity and respect.

Who North Helpline Serves
North Helpline serves individuals with disabilities, seniors, families with infants and children, immigrants, low-income adults, people who are either underemployed or unemployed, and the homeless. The geographic range of North Helpline's services includes residents living in zip codes: 98115, 98125, 98133, 98155, and 98177.

Residents of Lake City, Lake Forest Park, North Seattle, and Shoreline have a rare, essential resource in North Helpline, since it is one of only a few non-profit emergency service providers and food banks in Greater North Seattle. This area has a high percentage of low-income housing and a disproportionately large number of homeless people. In addition, with the recent economic downturn, more people are seeking help on a weekly basis at North Helpline, including those who indicate that they have never had to rely on food bank or emergency services until now.

North Helpline History

North Helpline is a grassroots organization that was started in 1989 by a small group of Greater North Seattle residents who noticed that many families in the community were in financial distress and not able to pay their rent, cover their utility bills, or put food on the table because their paychecks didn't stretch that far. These caring individuals saw that several families in the area had to make the difficult decisions regarding whether to buy food or medicine, pay for clothing or shelter, and in general struggle with affording the necessities in their lives. North Helpline was started in response to these challenges that community members were facing. North Helpline gained its nonprofit 501c3 status in September 1989 and opened its doors to serve the community on April 3, 1990.

The individuals who started North Helpline volunteered countless hours to help provide basic services for those most in need in the North Seattle area. Two volunteers actually ran the North Helpline on a weekly basis, and they took responsibility for carrying out all parts of the process, including sorting and bagging food and overseeing the distribution process. An area collective called the Telephone Pioneers played a key role in helping oversee North Helpline's services, and this collective has continued to provide support to North Helpline from those early days through to the present. Interestingly, even though the local chapter of the Telephone Pioneers disbanded in December 2008, individual members continue to demonstrate their tremendous passion for North Helpline's mission by meeting each month for breakfast and collecting donations of food and money.

Over North Helpline's almost 20-year history, the initial small band of dedicated volunteers has blossomed into a large and very capable group of approximately 600 volunteers who currently contribute over 2,000 hours each month to NHL to help the more than 1,000 clients each week who are seeking help with survival issues such as procuring food, securing shelter, and managing their lives.

North Helpline started out by "borrowing" space in the Lake City Neighborhood Service Center, turning the community conference center into a food distribution area each week and converting it back to a conference center after the clients left with their food. A 40-foot cargo container was added outside for dry storage and an outdoor walk-in refrigerator and freezer were also constructed. Most of the initial volunteers were members of area service organizations, churches, and concerned community members. They gathered together to provide food and emergency services to clients in need each week. NHL received monthly shipments of food from the Emergency Feeding Program, an organization which was started by area churches in order to consolidate their individual food pantries to have a greater impact in meeting the needs of the hungry throughout the Seattle community. This program helped make NHL's food distribution process go more smoothly, since the food arrived already sorted and bagged, and there were even specialty diabetic bags and low sugar/low salt bags available for distribution.

In the fall of 2001, the food bank in Shoreline stopped serving Seattle residents. North Helpline was asked by the City of Seattle to start a "full service" food bank. Thus the Lake City/Northgate Food Bank was born. Help was received from United Way, the City of Seattle, King County, and community organizations. The first distribution in October of 2001 served about 40 households with less then 100 individuals. Growth over the subsequent eight years has brought NHL to the first quarter of 2009 serving over 500 households each week, representing some 1,200 individuals. North Helpline serves residents of Northeast Seattle, Lake Forest Park, and the southern area of Shoreline - a "Food Bank without Boundaries."

North Helpline began hosting the Roger Bouck RotaCare Free Medical Clinic in 2002. The clinic is sponsored by Rotary International and provides free basic medical care to NHL's homeless and other most vulnerable clients. Roger Bouck was a generous donor of time and resources from North Helpline's start, and he was also instrumental in helping get the RotaCare Clinic up and running.

A New Home for North Helpline

In 2004, planning was initiated to replace Fire Station 39, NHL's co-joined neighbor. The building was slated to be removed with the old fire station, so NHL needed a new home. North Helpline personnel spent several years investigating several options, including looking at existing properties, co-building with the new fire station, building a stand-alone facility, using trucks for mobile distribution - everything and anything. In 2007, NHL formed a partnership with the Low Income Housing Institute [LIHI] to build a completely new space for the Food Bank, Emergency Services, and the RotaCare Clinic. NHL will move into the new joint facility in December 2009. This facility, named McDermott Place, is located south of the Lake City Fred Meyers. The new building will be six stories high and have 75 studio apartments to house recently homeless individuals. Half of those apartments will be reserved for homeless veterans (note that NHL currently has approximately 50 homeless veterans as clients).

North Helpline will occupy approximately 6,500 square feet on the ground floor, with an additional 2,500 square feet on the second floor for the Roger Bouck RotaCare Medical Clinic. North Helpline owns the space as two condominiums. The $1,900,000 estimated total cost of this new facility has been contributed by the City of Seattle, King County, State of Washington, and the federal government [HUD]. As of March 2009, North Helpline is still working to raise the final $300,000 for the medical clinic space.

McDermott Place will play an essential role in the community by offering housing for the currently homeless, the NHL Food Bank, Emergency Services, and free acute medical care for community members in need, and veterans services provided in-house by Sound Mental Health. Through these important partnerships, NHL is providing outstanding services to the community.

North Helpline Programs

North Helpline offers vital services to prevent homelessness and encourage stability in families and the community by providing food, baby supplies, rental eviction prevention, utility shut off prevention assistance, and move-in assistance. North Helpline also provides transportation assistance including free bus tickets to help clients get to medical appointments and employment interviews. In addition, North Helpline makes referrals for clients to other community lifeline services and programs for further assistance.

North Helpline programs include the following:

Food Bank
Providing food to area families and community members in need is a mainstay of NHL's services. Every week, North Helpline volunteers distribute food to more than 1,000 clients per week, mainly on Saturdays (with a smaller, more limited distribution on Wednesdays). Due to the recent economic downturn, many clients are new to NHL, never having had to use food bank services in the past.

In order to ensure there is enough food to feed clients each week, NHL volunteers perform food rescue (see below) every week, collect food on-site from generous community members, and augment the food supply with orders from Food Lifeline and Northwest Harvest, Seattle agencies that serve as food distributors to organizations such as NHL.

North Helpline is able to offer a balanced diet of foods. Each week, clients receive a mixture of canned and fresh fruit and vegetables, starch staples such as rice, potatoes, and pasta, and bakery items including bread and pastries and frozen meat products. Our homeless clients may also receive "no cook" meals in a can or box each day that we are open.

Baby Cupboard
This program provides formula, baby food, diapers, and other baby supplies for families with children under two years of age, as well as a Toddler Program that provides food staples to children ages two through five. This program is offered on the first Saturday of each month at the Food Bank and the following week at Emergency Services, as well as throughout the month in emergency situations for clients in need.

Grocery Rescue
A mainstay of North Helpline's regular food supply comes from the generosity of area grocery stores such as QFC, Safeway, and Fred Meyer, as well as other food-related organizations such as Metropolitan Market, OroWheat, and Starbucks, and local faith-based organizations, all of whom regularly set aside food for North Helpline volunteers to pick up. NHL partners with many organizations and agencies in order to meet the needs of its community. An average of 30,000 pounds of food (or approximately 35 percent of donated food to NHL) comes to the food bank this way. Twenty-two NHL, Food Handler Certified Volunteers make several runs each week to pick up this food.

Once the food is delivered on-site, additional volunteers sort through it to ensure that the food that is distributed to clients has not spoiled or is otherwise unsuitable for distribution. North Helpline has refrigeration units on-site to help preserve food, and all volunteers follow a strict food screening regimen to ensure that clients do not receive any food that is unsafe.

Food Drives
North Helpline coordinates with area organizations to set up food drives throughout the year. These can be seasonal events in conjunction with a certain time of year (e.g. Thanksgiving and Christmas), or they can be ongoing collection opportunities. North Helpline distributes barrels to area organizations so that customers and clients of these organizations can contribute food. During the 2008 holiday season, NHL received over 2,600 pounds of food via these helpful food drives.

Emergency Services
North Helpline provides emergency assistance, including eviction prevention, assistance with preventing utility shut-offs, move-in costs, and referrals to community services. These services are offered Tuesday through Thursday each week with a specially trained volunteer staff of eleven. The need for these services grew 15% in 2008. Once a year, each client is eligible to receive $100 toward preventing eviction or $100 toward move-in expenses in special situations. Twice a year, each client is eligible to receive $75 to avoid utilities being shut off.

Roger Bouck RotaCare Free Clinic Health Care Services
Currently, free medical care is provided through a partnership that includes RotaCare (which is sponsored by Rotary International and funded by local Rotary Clubs), Seattle Pacific University School of Nursing, Bartell Drugs, and Northwest Hospital. Dedicated physicians, nurse practitioners, and standard issue nurses, as well as registrars, volunteer their time each Saturday to provide services ranging from acute care and health services screenings to free flu shots and blood pressure checks. Lab services are provided by Northwest Hospital, and referrals are made for services determined to be beyond the scope of the clinic. Bartell's provides free or reduced-price prescriptions to RotaCare clients, with RotaCare covering the remainder of the costs.

When the space is completed in McDermott Place, free dental care and health education classes will also be offered through the RotaCare Clinic.

Referrals to Other Community Resources
North Helpline provides referrals to clients for services such as educational opportunities, job training, employment support, counseling, and other mental health services. North Helpline also makes referrals for free legal aid and access to city programs including signing up for food stamps and other critical assistance.

North Helpline Impact

Following are statistics that show NHL's impact in 2008, along with some other information about the demographics of the Greater North Seattle community.

2008 NHL Accomplishments:

o North Helpline provided food for 2,584 discrete households, representing 5,344 individuals.

o The food distribution for each individual client averaged 22 pounds of fresh produce, bread, and protein in accordance with the Food Pyramid of Nutrition.

o NHL issued 1,061 Emergency Feeding Program Pre-Packaged Bags that fed 2,603 individuals.

o 958 volunteers donated 26,247 hours of time.

o NHL distributed 2,117 jars of baby food, 1,228 packages of diapers, and 237 containers of high value formula.

o NHL registered 74 veterans as clients, 21 of whom were homeless.

o NHL also provided $9,260 to 126 families to prevent them from being evicted and paid $5,833 in utilities for 111 families with utility shut-off notices.

Demographics of Northeast Seattle
Following are demographics that describe the make-up of the community that NHL serves:

o Children in schools near Lake City are more likely to come from families at or below the federal poverty level. At Olympic Hills Elementary, 63% of students receive free or reduced lunches. At Northgate Elementary, the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunches is 80%. This compares to Seattle School District's average of 40%. Nearly 60% of these Lake City area students are from communities of color, and many speak limited English.

o Census data from North Seattle shows that there are approximately 4,000 people of Asian origin, 1,500 African-Americans and African immigrants, and 1,500 who are Hispanic living in Lake City.

o Other ethnic groups with significant populations in the Lake City area include Russian, Slavic, Arabic, Iraqi, Iranian, Pacific Islanders, and Thai.

o African immigrants come primarily from Ethiopia, Eritrea, East Africa, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

o The increasing diversity of the community North Helpline serves is due to the relative availability of affordable and low-income housing in North Seattle and the influx of newly arrived immigrants. 17.8% of the population is foreign born, with approximately one quarter of those entering the United States in the last 10 years.

North Helpline relies on a strong base of volunteer translators and interpreters to make sure that staff and volunteers are able to communicate with every client who makes use of NHL's services. In addition, most handouts and forms that North Helpline provides are printed in multiple languages.

NHL Collaborative Partnerships

Collaborative Relationships
North Helpline has grown to be an essential part of the Lake City/Northgate neighborhood, working diligently to cultivate a strong and well-developed connection to the local community. NHL continuously seeks to leverage the support of the local community through outreach, welcoming volunteers, and receiving donations of food and financial resources.

Community members donate over 2,000 hours each month to counsel clients, pick up donated groceries from local stores, sort and stock donated food, set up the food bank each week, and hand out food to clients on distribution days.

North Helpline is a member of a number of neighborhood organizations such as the Lake City Chamber of Commerce, Lake City Community Council, Northgate Chamber of Commerce, North District Council, and Lake City Task Force to End Homelessness. North Helpline is also an active participant in the ongoing dialogue among North Seattle organizations regarding improving the neighborhood and the local community.

North Helpline is a member of the Seattle Food Committee, which is a consortium of 27 Seattle food banks that meet monthly to exchange information, bulk buy food, and present information related to serving the hungry to community groups and government organizations. North Helpline also receives support through Food Resources, a program of Solid Ground, the largest provider of organic produce to Seattle food banks and a key resource for area food bank efforts to serve families with young children.

NHL collaborates closely with:

o Emergency Preparedness Program
o Feed the Hungry Food Stamps Program
o Lake City Community Service Organizations
o Lake City Farmers Market
o Lake City Library
o Lake City Neighborhood Service Center
o Lake City/Northgate Communities of Faith
o Lake Forest Park Farmers Market
o Mennonite Church Homeless Outreach
o North Seattle Community College (Worker Retraining and ELL Classes)
o North Seattle Family Center (a program of Children's Home Society)
o Red Cross Language Bank
o Seattle Community Court (a program that engages low-level offenders in community service)
o Women, Infants and Children Program (WIC)

NHL also has frequent contact with the following legislators:

o 46th District State Representatives and Senator: