“Eggs, bacon, pancakes…”
When I asked this 8-year-old named Justify if he likes to cook in his new, bright blue kitchen, he said yes. Looking up from his dinosaur drawing, he eagerly spouted that list of breakfast foods.
“She didn’t ask you what you liked to eat, she said what do you like to cook! (laughing)”
That’s Justify’s mom, Shannon K. For privacy reasons, she asked us not to use her full last name.
Last month, she and her son moved into this Springfield apartment. It’s one of six, two-bedroom apartments in Spero Place, a building recently purchased and renovated by the Kitchen, Inc.
Shannon says her previous housing situation was unstable.
“Me and his dad living with people, or we’d have a place and we’d lose it, end up having to live his family, or in and out of hotels,” she says.
For the last two years, she and her son lived at the Missouri Hotel. Now that that facility is no longer in use, Shannon says she is very grateful to have her own place.
“I’d rather have a little bitty room than live with other people.”
Rorie Orgeron (Or-sher-on), CEO of The Kitchen, agrees that the apartments are rather small. He showed me around a different unit in the building, which is being prepared for an expectant mother and her little girl.
“This is, of course, one little bedroom. It’s not a big apartment, but you know, to get started, people don’t need a real large space, and, knowing that this is a two bedroom, we’re not going to stick someone in here, you know, a couple with five kids,” Orgeron says.
The Kitchen also carefully plans which individuals in each of their multiple programs will receive housing in the new building.
“There’s two apartments in the building that will be used for our Rare Breed housing program, and the other four apartments are being used for other people that are in our housing programs, so they could come from our veterans program, or our Housing First program that we have,” Orgeron says.
The Rare Breed is a transitional housing program that requires certain qualifications for the residents, such as getting a job. The Housing First model is different, says Orgeron, offering a hypothetical example.
“She might drink a lot, we don’t know, she might have problems, we take her directly from the street and put her into an apartment and give her case managers. People in that situation would [then] typically drink less and have less problems.”
Other benefits to the new housing include developing a community.
“Your mom always told you don’t hang around with a bad crowd, well adults do the same thing. So they have people that they might hang around with that are a bad influence. So we’ve found that when we take people off the street and put them into apartments, a lot of times they don’t hang out with that group around anymore, that bad influence.”
He adds that a resident’s health often improves.
“The first four people that we put into the Housing First program, those first four people had 20 ER visits in the previous 90 days before we put them into housing. One year after that, those people had 3 ER visits in the next year.”
Simply not being outside in the elements, Orgeron explains, can reap huge benefits for individuals.
The organization plans to continue building units to continue providing residents with these benefits. Along with the new Spero place, The Kitchen also owns Beacon Village, which has 44, 2 and 3 bedroom duplexes and 16, one-bedroom apartments.
“We’re getting ready to break ground in July or August for Beacon Village 2, and there’ll be 32 more units out there.”
In all, the Kitchen now owns 82 units of low income housing.
For Shannon and Justify, The Kitchen’s housing means good shelter, and a place to relax and just watch cartoons together, as they did this afternoon.
REPORTER: “Justify, how do you like it [here]?”
JUSTIFY: “Good.”
Shannon adds, “He likes it, he’s happy he’s got his own room. For two years we shared a room, so now he’s got his own room. But he’s still, as always, right here by my side.”