Who We Are
Northwest Hospitality's Mission:
Empower positive community engagement with our vulnerable neighbors and their pets through mutual aid and simple programs while educating changemakers that housing is cheaper than homelessness.
Values:
Northwest Hospitality is determined to support the health, safety, and dignity of every person we can reach who is living in the streets of Washington State. Our programs are designed to directly serve basic needs, work to get people into permanent housing, and everything in between. We proudly acknowledge service to people who may have troubling histories, including incarcerations and addictions, and willfully seek to serve all people without any bias or judgment and to the exclusion of none. We recognize that this may occasionally result in our programs not being used toward their intended purposes. We accept this risk because of the greater service opportunities it makes available while at the same time doing everything we can to limit the potential for abuse.
What We Do
Northwest Hospitality is, at our core, a group of volunteers who are committed to building healthier communities. Our primary approach is to support the people in our communities who are struggling the most, but a grander view is required to address the roots of the problems that the people in our communities face.
We support mutual aid teams throughout the state of Washington to enhance their outreach capabilities by providing the tools and resources they need to maximize their local impacts. We advocate to leadership in our communities about the truths behind homelessness - trauma-informed practices; housing, food, and addiction treatment are healthcare issues; current housing, shelter, and basic needs resources are inadequate, etc. - and push for changes and resources that will better provide for our communities. We directly provide outreach and support services in many communities, most prevalently in Kitsap and King Counties where our presence is currently greatest. These services include anything from a pair of socks to tents and sleeping bags, vehicle repairs, and rent assistance and everything in between. We are primarily funded by individual donations which allows us more flexibility than other organizations often have.
We have many programs, all supported by volunteer efforts.
- A mobile clothing and supply closet which our volunteers take to encampments, events, and recovery centers.
- We do community litter cleanups and provide litter mitigation services wherever people are allowed to stay for any given period of time - nearly 200,000 lbs of trash since 2019.
- Our Hospitality Cards are held by people living in tents and vehicles so that we can directly provide immediate and flexible support as we have resources and several advocates also have hospitality cards so we are able to support their outreach.
- Resources: We maintain a state-wide online resource database which we use to print out hard-copies to distribute in our Hospitality Kits.
- Hospitality Kits: Support community groups to assemble and distribute hygiene kits - over 3,200 distributed to date.
- We do outreach to unhoused pets to provide treatments, medicine, neuter, shots, fosters, and more.
- We support local outreach efforts in any way we can including the Workforce Ready Initiative, Homeless Organizing Community Seattle, West Seattle Mutual Aid Party, Kitsap Neighborhood Little Pantries, Rock the Block, Happy Tuesday, and more!
Details
| (888) 222-5240 | |
| info@nwhospitality.org | |
| Anton Preisinger | |
| Director | |
| https://www.nwhospitality.org |
