Who We Are
MISSION
We provide permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. We create and manage tiny home villages that foster community, encourage personal growth, and promote access to the care and services residents need.
PURPOSE
To reduce homelessness in our community by housing chronically homeless individuals and work with them to keep them housed. We provide an environment with supportive services where they can stabilize and live their lives with dignity.
VISION
Rebuilding Lives. Restoring Hope.
Our Values
Our shared values help New Horizon Communities make thoughtful decisions that support our mission and vision.
Foster Community: Foster community within our villages, as well as between our villages and organization, and the broader community.
Promote Empowerment: Encourage the growth and wellbeing of our residents, staff, Board, and organization.
Promote Sustainability: Continuous operations from a financial, social, organizational, and environmental perspective.
Educate the Public: Contribute to public education about, and further our advocacy about homelessness, addiction, mental health, and the needs of our residents.
Promote Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility: Promote equity and inclusion, both internally and externally, that strives to dismantle historical systemic barriers for marginalized populations, particularly in the homeless community.
About
COMMUNITY LIVING
Our villages revolve around our community centers, which hold a large kitchen, dining and lounge area, laundry facilities, extracurricular room, computer center, staff offices, private space to meet with other providers, and additional bathing facilities. Village residents support each other through struggles and hardships and share the joys and challenges of rebuilding their lives together. With recovery comes a new focus on employment, additional education and resuming relationships with family and the larger community - or just being able to finally sit down relax, and heal. Village residents are responsible for their own cottages and share the cleaning and light maintenance of the community center and grounds, which helps to empower with a sense of ownership of their own home and community. Their Village Life Committee team plans events and arranges the chore rotation and brings up any suggestions to staff.
SECURITY AND PRIVACY
Each resident has their own tiny home and lawn space. They can lock their front doors, sleep in their own bed, and close their curtains. The villages provide residents with privacy, as well as a new sense of security. Our community centers have cameras for residents’ safety and are locked to the public after-hours. When you visit the village, you see the residents' sense of ownership and pride expressed in the unique appearance and personality of each tiny home. Residents are encouraged to express themselves and decorate and personalize their space.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND ACCESSIBILITY
NHC welcomes, honors, and celebrates our clients, colleagues, and communities’ diverse identities, histories, knowledge, languages, and cultures. Our organizational values shape our work individually and collectively, as we prioritize people’s belonging and achievement. We work on challenging, altering, and ultimately dismantling interconnected structural and historical oppression systems. We collaborate with community stakeholders and partners to develop policy and decision-making frameworks that advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
Our Olympia and Orting villages have solar panels on each tiny home and community center, which generate renewable energy and will reduce our C02 emissions by 116,000 pounds, equivalent to planting 1,400 trees every year, or not driving 212,000 miles. We are in the works on going solar at our Shelton village and hope to have the installation done by the end of 2024. We have organic gardens that residents use for harvesting produce. Our tiny homes are all less than 300 sq. ft., which produce a smaller foot print. Our homes are also economically efficient, costing less than half of what it costs to build your average apartment. We also use long lasting efficient LED lighting as well as low-flow toilets and showers to reduce our water consumption.
ADVOCACY & SUPPORT
Our team works to support and guide our residents toward recovery, healing, and an overall better quality of life. We strive to provide a trauma-informed approach to working one-on-one with residents and provide resource navigation and care coordination. Each resident is treated like the individual they are and given access to the resources they need to fulfill their own goals for independence. Beyond case management, we have a behavioral health program that provides accessible on-site mental health therapy, transportation, and a variety of partnerships with local organizations and agencies to provide a holistic approach to care.
History
CAMP QUIXOTE
Camp Quixote started in Olympia, Washington in 2007, where a group of people experiencing homelessness and their activist supporters, the Poor People’s Union, set up an encampment on a downtown city lot. Their camp was in response to a city ordinance that severely restricted the use of sidewalks (aka criminalizing homelessness). The camp was being threatened with eviction and asked the local Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation for sanctuary on their campus. It was a huge decision for the congregation and luckily, they voted yes, and that's what started the 6 year journey for Camp Quixote. It's a faith-based organization's right to offer sanctuary on their property, but the city required some stipulations. First, the camp could not be permanent, and had to move every 90 days (later on, 180 days). Second, it had to be "hosted" 24/7. This meant someone from the congregation needed to be at the camp constantly to make sure everything was running smoothly. These stipulations are actually a huge part of how the camp gathered a large community of support. Many folks at the faith-based community had never known someone experiencing homelessness, let alone talk to them. The overseeing of the camp helped to humanize the residents, and showed the volunteers that they really were just like them, and that homelessness can happen to anyone.
As you can imagine, picking up and relocating 30+ peoples' homes every 90 days is a big ordeal. Fortunately, many faith-based communities in Olympia, Lacey, and Tumwater stepped up to coordinate the moves. And thus, Panza (doing business as New Horizon Communities) was born. Panza (501c3 nonprofit) was created to support Camp Quixote. Living in a tent however, is not ideal and the residents and members of Panza wanted to find a permanent and more dignified way of living. It was a lot of hard work testifying at city council meetings, presenting at community events, and fundraising but the residents and members of Panza knew this was something they were passionate about and wouldn't stop until they found a resolution. Then the legislature set aside funding for the creation of permanent supportive housing and Thurston County committed some land! After a lot of hard work, Quixote Village opened its doors on December 24th, 2013. For more information on how Camp Quixote was started, visit Panza founder, Tim Ransom's Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation Journal article.