Mapping the Impact of the Recovery Act

I recently met a woman whose story blew my mind. I'll call her Nadia. She is a single mother with eight kids. She and her husband were middle-school sweethearts, and although they struggled financially, both working two minimum-wage jobs, they were somehow managing to make ends meet.

Sadly, Nadia's world fell apart two years ago when she came home from work one day to discover that her husband had committed suicide. Since then, life has been a whirlwind for Nadia and her children; they are struggling to deal with their devastation while going in and out of homelessness. Last November, when they came to the homeless service center where I work, Nadia and her children were living in a tiny one-room studio apartment just outside of Boston.

Under any other circumstances, my organization may not have been able to help Nadia and her family right away. They may have stayed on a waiting list or had to move into a shelter before getting the housing assistance they needed. But this year, it was different. We used money from the Recovery Act to find Nadia and her kids a four-bedroom apartment. They moved in just two days before Christmas.

There are hundreds of success stories like this, all originating from the tiny chunk ($1.5 billion) of Obama's $800 billion Recovery Act bill that was dedicated towards the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program (HPRP). Since then, this money has slowly trickled down to cities and towns across the country, moving folks into housing and keeping at-risk families in their homes. It isn't enough to help everyone, but it is changing lives.

We know this money is helping families like Nadia's all across the country, but it's hard to get a sense of just how vast this impact is until you see it mapped out. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has created an HPRP Media Map to help visual people (like me) see the trickle-down impact of the stimulus funds from Alaska to Maine. Each flag links to a story of an individual who has avoided the downward spiral into homelessness thanks to this assistance.

Remember: these are just the stories that hit the newsstands. There are countless more, like Nadia's.

Photo credit: National Alliance to End Homelessness