Nestled behind a grove of birch trees, on a quiet corner of Gladstone Street in Bellingham, stands Lydia Place’s brand-new development, a 11-unit permanent supportive housing project for families experiencing homelessness, fit with two full-service daycare classrooms.
Built on the site of Lydia Place’s first office — operated since 1989 — Heart House seeks to alleviate two problems at once: the ever-rising price of child care, and the ever-present threat of families falling into homelessness.
The new building held its grand opening on May 26, when residents and their children began moving into consistent, safe and sanitary housing. Now, the start of a new school year marks another occasion, as Heart House begins its first year of full-service child care beginning in October.
The child care center, staffed and operated by the Whatcom Family YMCA, features a 14-student room for toddlers and a 20-student room for preschool-age children. Heart House holds a spot for the children of the 11 residents living above the ground-level child care center, but executive director Emily O’Connor said the goal is to offer openings to anyone in Bellingham who may need them.
“We really want this to be a community child care center, and we know that it is in everybody’s best interest when we don’t segregate ourselves by income,” O’Connor said. “We want the child care center to reflect the community we live in, which is full of diversity. So, we want that priority access for residents.”
Haley White, human resources and operation manager for Lydia Place, looks out the window of a child care room on the first floor of Heart House. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News) Some Heart House residents and many women that receive services from Lydia Place are survivors of domestic violence.
For one 45-year-old mother of a pre-K boy, who wished to remain anonymous due to safety precautions, the overwhelming emotion she feels from her new living situation can be described in just one word.
“Security,” she said. “A sense of security, and a sense of self-worth. I’d be living in my van, honestly. I don’t know where else I’d go. Without Lydia Place, I’d be homeless, so I’m grateful to Lydia Place for getting me into a home — and a nice one at that.”
Lydia Place rents out the spacious, light-soaked classrooms to the YMCA free of charge. The ability to run a child care facility without the burden of rent payments is critical for a business that doesn’t operate with profit in mind, said Jamie Desmul, director of early learning at the YMCA.
“It’s a huge weight off,” Desmul said, “to be able to have an agreement with the operator of the building that understands where we are as a business. That type of agreement is really amazing. We don’t do it because we’re making a huge profit, we’re doing it because it’s something the community needs.”
The idea for combining a permanent supportive housing facility with a child care facility started back in 2014, in response to a high cost of living that continues to rise.
Then came the years-long rezoning process, since Heart House is a multi-unit, three-story building in a neighborhood zoned for single-family housing. After that came years of campaigning for funding, drawing up plans with Bellingham-based RAM Construction and partnering with Desmul and the YMCA. Then the pandemic hit, and ground wasn’t broken for Heart House until summer 2021.
Finally, after years of planning, labor and approval from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, Heart House has welcomed in 11 families on the brink of homelessness, and opened up 34 spots for child care in a city that is desperately short of licensed child care facilities.
“We see the need, we get all the calls and all the emails from the parents that are just desperate for anything,” Desmul said. “Any chance that we can try and take a little bit of pressure off that overcrowded system that we’re dealing with right now is a benefit.”
However, 34 spots cannot solve the capacity problems for thousands of pre-K children in Whatcom County. Eleven homes for the hundreds of homeless residents in Bellingham cannot solve the problem, either, O’Connor said. But a drop in the bucket is better than no drop at all.
“It’s an investment in the fabric of our community,” O’Connor said. “The kids in our housing programs are next. They’re either the next generation of people on our street corners or not, depending on whether we show up to invest in those kids’ lives today.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Heart House had nine units, the current number of units at Heart House is 11, according to Lydia Place. Lydia Place also prefers the term “Permanent Supportive Housing” to describe the units at Heart House, instead of the term “transitional housing.” The story was updated to reflect this change on Sept. 20 at 2:19 p.m. The Cascadia Daily News regrets the error.
