Needy kids, adults get boost from fed grant

A $250,000 federal grant to the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority will be used to support the agency’s myriad programs aimed at aiding at-risk children and adults.

“This grant will provide the glue between all of our programs,” said KCCH spokesperson Sarah Lee. “If we get referred to someone at the beginning of their school years and take them all the way through, we have a greater chance of success.”

Lee rattled off several success stories, including a 12-year-old who was on the road to becoming a dropout who is now at Brown University and a Kurdish teenager who was suffering from combat shock. “We gave him a safe place to practice English and taught him how to laugh,” she said.

KCCH provides programs as simple as matching up latch-key kids with adults who can fix them a snack and listen to their day to complicated topics like home construction and credit counseling. As a result, Lee said people will be protected against predatory lending practices that victimize less savvy consumers.

“People hear ‘public housing’ and they think the worst,” she said. “But our mission is to build stronger communities by helping people, like having someone build a home where the sweat equity translates into a down payment.”

KCCH, which has a staff of 50, is located at 9307 Bayshore Drive in Silverdale; 360-692-5596.

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