'Housing Hope' in Marysville becomes early Christmas gift for single mom, daughter

MARYSVILLE, Wash.  -- "This is our home baby!" single mother Sarah Brown exclaimed as she walked into her apartment for the first time in Marysville.

"This is your bedroom,” Brown said to her daughter as she looked around the home.

This apartment is the first place she’s called home after addiction put her on the street.

"Once I dropped my addiction and got sober, it seemed like things started falling into place for me,” said Brown.



Brown and her daughter are among the 50 families moving into the Housing Hope development in Marysville.

"This is permanent housing, they can stay here as long as they choose to stay here,” said Fred Safstrom, CEO of Housing Hope.

The one- and two-bedroom apartments are about 800 square feet. They provide homeless and low-income families a safe, stable place to call home.

The grand opening of the Twin Lakes development in Marysville will house 38 homeless families and 12 low-income families. It was a project five years in the making by Housing Hope.

The place is more than an address for the people who are moving in. It’s an opportunity to launch their lives again.

Housing Hope provides on-site adult life skills classes, child development and job training programs to help people like Brown who never got her GED rebuild her foundation in life.

"I want go back to school and try to figure out what would be good for me,’ said Brown.

Motivated to turn her life around, Brown says the future is kind of scary, but she’s hopeful.

"I’m nervous, because I’m not used to being on my own, but I feel like this is the beginning of so many things,” said Brown.

Many things that seem ordinary like having a bathroom, a clean kitchen and bedrooms are extraordinary for Brown, a young, single mother who now has a warm place to tuck her daughter in at night.

Christmas came early for the Browns, who now have something most people already do -- a place to call home.

Housing Hope prioritizes families like Brown’s who are the most vulnerable in Snohomish County. The 38 units for the homeless are fully subsidized, the low-income homes residents will pay a portion of their income.