“We share these stories, and are reminded just how profound it is to be a part CEF. We share them with gratitude for the whole wide CEF family—Members, Advocates, supporters, and friends. Thank you for reading, writing, and living this story with us!”
Archive | Highlight
David: Crafting Community
How one Member’s passion for quilting is spreading love and togetherness at CEF
David believes that every quilt is an opportunity for connection. “Our society is losing that personal touch, and in that process of us making that quilt, if someone is bothered about something, we have the chance to talk about it.” Originally from Sanford, North Carolina, David moved to Chapel Hill last summer to receive better medical care for his sickness and quickly found himself without a place to stay. “I’ve never experienced homelessness until now.”
David’s passion for quilting is life long. “I have been quilting for 30 years or more. When I was young I couldn’t play outside too much, I used to sew my mother’s clothes and when I got older I took an industrial sewing class.”
David was initially connected to CEF through the IFC men’s shelter. “I wanted to see all I could about all the people around, and I found out about CEF the day during that time I was sick. He (his advocate Kevin) was just like a brother. What I did is a lot of the meetings, and during that time and I was going to Opportunity Class. I was just trying to get a feel for what things were going.” David also enjoys engaging in Talking Sidewalks and CEF’s Advocacy Choir, where he performed for the CEF TED Talk in Memorial Hall this past April. His weekly meetings with his Advocate Kevin, however, sometimes included searching for local quilting groups to join “I liked taking something you would throw away and making something beautiful.”
In February of 2017, David, alongside Kevin, launched the first ever Quilting Circle in the Chapel Hill office. The Quilting Circle allows Members and Advocates to enjoy a community that socializes, relaxes and celebrates each other. “The thing about old-fashioned quilting is that it takes everyone together in the circle to make it. Quilting forces us to talk to each other about things and, in turn, we start to form a strong bond.” Each week, that is exactly what Members and Advocates do, gathering in the CEF office for a collaborative craft and safe space to support and celebrate one another. David, who is currently staying in the shelter, provides all the fabric and supplies himself. He has successfully gotten some supplies donated through the Scrap Exchange in Durham. His quilting projects vary from week to week as he brings new projects to keep people interested and learning. “I just take everything and look at the goodness of it because you can turn everything around and make it pretty, Cause you know, everybody has faults, everyone has needs, everyone is human so live and let live.”
The first quilt is set to be put up in the office this summer. “This is my way of giving back for everything y’all have done for me. If it wasn’t for CEF in this moment, in this time, these people would not be able to come together and make something so beautiful.”
So what is David looking forward to? ”To be in my own place so I can keep on quilting. I am going to quilt and sew until the day I leave the earth.”
Sound amazing? Come to Quilting Circle any Thursday at 6:00pm in the Chapel Hill office and see for yourself! No experience necessary.
Financial Independence Day 2017
The CEF Community is proud to announce the 6th annual Financial Independence Day on Saturday July 8th at Umstead Park in Chapel Hill. Join us as we celebrate member savings, accomplishments and financial freedom!
Things to get excited about
- Performances by the infamous CEF Advocacy Choir
- The Safe Savings raffle with prizes
- Live entertainment and a showcasing of community talents
- Arts and crafts and other fun activities for children
Things to know:
- Carpools are available (make sure to RSVP)
- Bringing a side dish if you want to share!
- Bring a chair or a picnic blanket to share if you have extra!
#29 – CEF’s TEDx Talk is Live!
CEF First-Time Homebuyers!
CEF matched savings accounts now support Members in reaching goals all along the continuum from homelessness to homeownership. We launched a new program in 2016 to support first-time homebuyers with Reinvestment Partners and the Duke Homebuyers Club.
Paige was one of the first 5 CEF Members to successfully purchase their own home during the first year of this collaborative program!
Paige worked incredibly hard and with amazing focus to reach her goal in just ten months. She worked extra jobs in addition to her full-time job at Duke. She participated in CEF’s Financial Coaching, meeting regularly with Donna Carrington (CEF’s Housing Stabilization Specialist) and sharing, “Donna was a great motivator and kept me on track with my financial goals.” Paige was able to pay off debts and improve her credit score, which qualified her for an affordable mortgage. Meanwhile, she successfully saved for her down payment and closing costs, receiving a dollar-for-dollar match from CEF!
Paige is proud to be a homeowner. One of the best parts? Her mortgage payment is actually cheaper than her rent payments were, and she is building an asset for the long term.
CEF is supporting this pilot program for first-time homebuyers in Durham in collaboration with Reinvestment Partners, the Duke Homebuyers Club, and the Duke University Office of Durham & Regional Affairs. The Homebuyers Club partnership brings together incredible resources for the participants, including homebuyer education and credit assessment through Reinvestment Partners, and a wide array of community experts through Duke’s partnerships, including attorneys, appraisers, and credit unions.
Meanwhile, CEF provides our one-on-one financial coaching so that participants like Paige can take action steps in building credit, budgeting to reach their goals, and accessing resources. In just the first year of this pilot collaboration, we have seen amazing results.
Since the Homebuyers Savings program began, results from April 2016 – April 2017 include:
- Pilot participants have built $16,864 in savings towards the purchase of their first homes.
- 5 of the first 9 members have already bought their homes, with the remaining participants well on their way towards achieving their goal within the 18-month pilot period!
- Members are saving on average $144 each per month
- 67 one-on-one coaching sessions completed with members in 1 year
- 85% of program participants are women
- 100% of program participants are people of color
- Thus far, mortgage payments for these homebuyers are less expensive than their monthly rent payments were previously.
CEF’s TED Talk: Homeless, and Outsaving Half of the United States
Presented at the 2017 TEDxUNC event at Memorial Hall: CEF’s Co-Founders / Co-Directors sharing the transformative story of a group of college students and shelter residents who built a community organization and financial tools that support sustained transitions out of homelessness. The CEF Advocacy Choir sings to close out the talk, with an original song about the joy of finding a home after experiencing homelessness.
photographs by TEDxUNC
When Gentrification Arrives At Your Door
John Miller and Advocate Audrey Boyles celebrate a successful moving day in 2012.
The following is a guest post by Durham resident and CEF Member, John Miller, who is an avid writer and advocate at www.blindtravel.net/ , where this post was originally published.
When Gentrification Arrives At Your Door
Or renovation. Rapid re-creation of a whole neighborhood. Call it what you want, the effects are the same.
We’ve all read the stories. Person, hard working, toward the lower end of the economic ladder, suddenly finds him or herself homeless. As we read this, we sit back and wonder to ourselves how this could have happened so quickly. Well I would venture to say that our current rental structure can contribute.
I have resided in my current large community here just northwest of downtown Durham for over four years. Each year, the costs have increased by about 20 to 30 dollars. Not too bad, right?
Except this year, they’re gonna hit me with the haymaker! They have been engaged in a steady process to re-design all of these older units to make them trendier, and probably more amenable to modern appliances. And let’s call it what it is, more expensive.
I get it. Located close to two medical facilities, Duke Hospital and the VA Medical Center, as well as that major university within easy walking distance, there is lots of money to be made in this area. And as guardians of the community (however all that internal stuff works), they have a responsibility to get that money flowing into their coffers if at all possible.
But what are those of us who are barely hanging on supposed to do? It’s a question I probably ask at least once a year, and every year it becomes demonstrably worse. Affordable housing is simply disappearing, and especially from places that need it the most for instance near said medical facilities and along transit lines. An example of this need? I have (had? well I think she’s still here somehow) a neighbor who moved into her apartment and lived there for 25 years so that she could have easy access to Duke Hospital in the event of somewhat regular heart emergencies. My guess is she has some kind of special dispensation that will allow her to remain there for as long as she pleases.
Certainly other than that though, I have noticed that this place has become a lot quieter. Most folks started packing up and moving out a good while ago, and my guess is it will be a while before the upper incomers start trickling in, once all of the reconstruction work has been completed.
As for me, this is not a tremendous deal. This is because I would have been moving on by January anyway, so that I can begin life as a married man. To transfer for the six or seven-month gap between now and then (I must depart by June 24th,) I have to pay these fine folks an additional $330 a month. That is a sixty (60!) percent increase, and would mean I would be living a lot closer to significant disaster due to any unexpected occurrence than I wish to experience. It seems silly though to relocate to some entirely unfamiliar venue for such a short period, and even if I decide to do that I am not sure where that would be as most of Durham, the Bull City’s prices have crept in that general direction. In any event, I have a couple of weeks to figure this out, on top of possible needs for other employment, grad school, and other general living interests. Chaotic, to say the least. But, it’ll all work out somehow because it has to. Wish me well.
Read the update to John’s apartment situation on his blog in his latest post: http://www.blindtravel.net/on-rites-of-passage-20-years-since-high-school-and-apartment-follow-up/
Using Behavioral Economics to Explore the Transition to Housing
Thank you to the over 70 participants from partner agencies that attended the workshop CEF co-hosted with the Common Cents Lab focused on “Using Behavioral Economics to Explore the Transition to Housing.”
Together, we brainstormed about how behavioral economics might help nonprofits think creatively about building better programs and smarter solutions to support individuals moving out of homelessness. The incredible team at the Common Cents Lab shared an introduction to the principles of behavioral economics, and led the group through an interactive workshop to put those principles into action for better program design.
Behavioral economics is “the study of how people really make choices–not in a simplified economic model, but in the textured and rich reality of daily life, and draws on insight from both psychology and economics” (CFED).
CEF is working with the Common Cent Labs this year to apply these learnings to our partnerships with shelters to promote increased engagement with CEF’s matched savings accounts in a way that supports Members in achieving short-term savings goals and builds longer-term saving habits. Through our last joint project with the team, we implemented a new way for Members to track progress towards their savings goals through a punchcard and tested its efficacy through a randomized control trial. Every time Members in the trial group made a deposit, they received a punch, and received gold tokens and new levels of punchcards after each card was filled. An article is soon to be published by the research documenting the promising results of this study… Just for a preview: “Members who received the punchcard to track their deposits completed 30% more of their goal than members who were in the control condition” (Guzman and Tepper, full article to be published late spring 2017).
Indiana received the very first punch on a CEF Savings Card! This piggy- themed punch card developed with Common Cents Lab, tracks each deposit and captures progress towards her goals!
We are excited to continue learning throughout this year with the team at the Common Cents Lab! Since the workshop, partners have shared that they are still really thinking about how behavioral economic analysis such as “tunneling” or “friction costs” can be addressed in their own work. Building on the incredible momentum of bringing 70 of our partners into the room together to explore these concepts, we got feedback from participants on where to go from here in our collaborative learning, and will be exploring other topics in the months to come — such as “Manage Cash Flow after Housing Transitions,” and “Overcome Barriers to Banking.“
Double Your Dollars: Here’s Why
Your gifts always go a long way at CEF, but between now and May 31st, they will go even further! Thanks to a generous $10,000 matching challenge from the Stewards Fund, your donation may be doubled.
Why Give?
Check out this recent newspaper article featuring Steven, a current CEF Member who started a Facebook fundraiser for CEF that he is running through his birthday in July. Steven’s goal is to raise $1,000 for CEF, sharing “I understand how hard it is for a lot of people to donate, but CEF helps so many people in the community… I’m just trying to help them in a way — to give back.”
CEF Spring Celebrations 2017
Thanks for coming to the Party on April 13th!
