SEATTLE — After 10 years of outreach, Seattle-based nonprofit Facing Homelessness is closing its doors. Leaders cite a lack of sustainable funding as the reason for ending.
The organization started in 2010 as a photojournalism project, capturing the faces of people experiencing homelessness. The Window of Kindness was then created as a way to get resources to those people.
Phoebe Anderson-Kline, director of Community Programs, said that for 10 years, the University District Window of Kindness was open four days a week to hand out supplies, serving an average of 30 people per day.
She said that once the decision was made to shutter, the nonprofit shut down quickly, hosting a final handout day Wednesday with their remaining supplies.
“It’s devastating to lose this organization, to lose the staff that we’ve been working with. I don’t think words can really capture it,” said Anderson-Kline.
On the final day of distribution, people steadily stopped by to collect a hot meal, clothing, and toiletries, items that many say have become even harder to get recently due to increasing prices at stores.
“It’s helped me out a lot. When I can’t afford to pay for it, they help me out,” said Jay, a local who has continuously relied on these resources.
Many staff members who recently got the news they’d been laid off were volunteering on the last day. Former staffer Karina said she ran the Window of Kindness and knows that even though this nonprofit is ending, the need will still exist, so she hopes to start her own nonprofit.
“The Window of Kindness was not just a job for me, it was a lifestyle,” she said, adding that the connections made between staff and clients is one of the most valuable elements. “The most devastating is thinking about all the connections with clients and volunteers from the years that’s just like we don’t have a platform, we don’t have a place to come together and do this work anymore. That’s what hurts the most.”