Featured Program: The Hope House
The day she got out of prison, Lee Ann Winters visited her parole officer―as required.
The officer didn’t even raise his eyes to look at her as he indifferently worked on her paperwork in his wrinkled shirt spattered with stains from the Chinese food he had eaten for lunch. Had he looked, he would have seen more than just a graying woman in her fifties who looked much older after years of harsh living on the streets. As far as he was concerned, all he needed to know about her was on the paper before him—Lee Ann Winters was just like any other addict who couldn’t hold a job, keep her kids or stay away from her drug of choice―meth. He felt he didn’t even have to look at her face to predict her future. How wrong he was.
“I’ll see you back in prison in two weeks,” he muttered sarcastically.
As she walked out the door, Lee Ann could feel the tears swell up in her tired eyes…but something else swelled up inside her as well. “Just watch me,” she thought determinedly.
She had planned to go straight from the parole office to the apartment of some friends, even though she knew how much they drank. As she looked down the sidewalk stretching out before her and toward the apartment, she instinctively felt that path would lead her straight back to doing drugs. She closed her eyes and sighed. It all seemed so hopeless. Without anywhere to go but the streets, she began to feel as if her parole officer was right…and for a brief minute, she believed that maybe her drug addiction was bigger than her.
It was at that moment, standing on the sidewalk pulling on the hem of her tattered sweat shirt, Lee Ann remembered Hope House. She had learned about this caring shelter from someone at a needle-exchange program, a sometimes controversial place where addicts exchange used needles for an equal number of new ones reducing the spread of disease. She had taken the woman’s advice and stayed at the shelter during one of her many failed attempts to get clean, but just for the night.
When she arrived at Hope House with nothing but the clothes on her back, she felt truly different this time. Instead of numb and desperate—she actually felt relieved and grateful. A small determined smile came across her face…hope…Hope House. “Perfect,” she thought.
Inside the clean, 34-bed shelter, she not only had a shower, a hot meal and a safe, warm place to lay down her worries, she also met Margaret—her new case worker. Together, they began to work on a plan for Lee Ann to leave homelessness and drugs behind her forever. When Lee Ann left the counselor’s office, Margaret was convinced that Lee Ann was very serious about rebuilding her life and with some real help and support, Lee Ann would make it.
Within a week and a half after Lee Ann arrived at the shelter, Margaret offered her one of the 25 modest apartments upstairs where she could live as she worked to stay off drugs and put her life back together. That same day, Margaret helped her find a job in the kitchen at a nearby restaurant. It should have been the happiest day of Lee Ann’s life, but heading toward the stairs up to her new apartment, the reality of the situation hit her. She didn’t have sheets or silverware. She didn’t even have an alarm clock to make sure she was up and ready for her new job the next morning.
It was like she was a kid again…and although she was “all grown up,” she had no clue how to be responsible. She had been living on the streets off and on since she was 17 years old. She had never had a place of her own.
As she placed her foot on the first step, she remembered how scary her life had been—she had overdosed on the cold pavement; she’d been attacked by strangers and had to fight for her life; but until this moment, nothing she’d seen on the streets was as scary as the 23 steps between her and that second floor apartment of Hope House.
Lee Ann knew she couldn’t keep running from her life, her addiction, her failures and herself. So she slowly and purposefully placed her foot on the next step, one after another, until she walked through the door of her new apartment and across the threshold of a new life.
But Lee Ann’s new life wasn’t always easy. She continued to suffer from bouts of nightmares, panic attacks and agoraphobia. The difference then was she had real friends who cared, like Margaret and all the Hope House staff members. They stayed right by her side, helping her make good decisions and build the necessary skills she needed to make it on her own.
After two years at Hope House, Lee Ann has now moved out into a freshly remodeled one-bedroom apartment of her own. She has been attending the local community college and just completed her first quarter in a two-year culinary arts program—with straight As. She has been drug free for almost four years, and is a volunteer at Hope House, helping out in the kitchen and at other local shelters as well.
She also volunteers as a guide with educational tours about homelessness in Spokane. These days, you might find Lee Ann leading a group past shelters for teens or homeless men and women as they are served their evening meals; or taking them under overpasses and past the plasma center and detox facilities. But wherever she takes her tour groups, she always makes a point to stop at Hope House. There she pauses at the same spot she stood in almost four years ago—outside the shelter doors in the dark of night.
“If it weren’t for Hope House, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now,” she says to the small crowd gathered in the pool of light under the doorway.
About Hope House
Emergency Shelter
There are more than 1,800 homeless single women in Spokane, many with mental health or chemical dependency issues — all with no safe place to go. Named for the refuge it provides, Hope House offers shelter from the dangerous streets to any woman regardless of her mental health status, chemical dependency issues or lifestyle. Hope House offers an environment of dignity, respect and compassion that honors the intrinsic value and unique experience of every woman.
Thirty-four shelter beds are available each night. Each woman receives personal care including:
- nutritious food
- a hot shower
- clean, dry clothing
- hygiene items
- a warm bed
- on-site case management
- resource information
Hope House also offers 25 apartments for low-income women who are ready to leave the streets.
These safe, affordable apartments offer women committed to working on the causes of their homelessness a supportive transition to living on their own. This residential program also includes:
- individualized case management
- opportunities for permanent housing
Originally known as the Downtown Women's Shelter, Hope House was founded in response to the 1997 serial murders of women on the streets of Spokane to offer women protection from violence on the street. Operated by Volunteers of America since 2001, Hope House is dedicated to making a significant difference in the lives of homeless women.
