Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month 

From September 15th to October 15th, we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month and honored the Hispanic community’s vital contributions to DC!

On the evening of October 11th, we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month with the families at Fort View, one of our affordable housing buildings. Fort View has a large Hispanic community with families from a diverse array of Spanish-speaking countries. The children made flags of their countries out of popsicle sticks, which represented a wide range of nationalities from Mexico to El Salvador. To end the night, everyone gathered for a delicious dinner, sponsored by Housing Up and prepared by one of the Fort View residents in his food truck!

Throughout the month, we brought attention to the history and contributions of the Hispanic community in DC as well as the unique housing challenges they face. Our Instagram carousel, Hispanic Heritage Month: Hispanic in DC, highlighted the diversity of the Hispanic community and their long history of housing activism displayed in the 1977 mural “Un Pueblo Sin Murales” located in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. In our other carousel, Homelessness in the Hispanic Community, we examined the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ report on the rising number of Hispanic individuals experiencing homelessness and the specific challenges they face culturally and socioeconomically.

Of the over 900 families that Housing Up serves, one-third are Hispanic. At Housing Up, we celebrate the Hispanic community all year-round, and we encourage everyone to join us!

Beyond Our Biology: Health & Homelessness

This month, we published a blog post, “Beyond Our Biology: Health and Homelessness,” addressing the intersections of health and homelessness. We investigated the Social Determinants of Health, or the non-medical factors that shape health, including the environment, healthcare access, stigma, and racism that contribute to poorer health outcomes for people experiencing homelessness. The 2024 DC Point-in-Time Count highlighted the importance of health and homelessness in our DC community. This report revealed that 22.1% of unhoused people in DC live with a chronic health condition, 19.6% are physically disabled, and 34.1% of individual adults and 9.5% of adults in families in DC had a history of mental illness. Housing Up actively works to dismantle the barriers to healthcare and well-being through our Housing First approach and by providing comprehensive support services to our families.

To learn more about the intersections of health and homelessness, check out our latest blog post here: “Beyond Our Biology: Health and Homelessness”.

Thank You for Attending Living in the City!

We want to extend a big thank you to all of those who attended and donated to our biggest fundraiser of the year, Living in the City! Thanks to your generosity, we were able to raise over $82,000 for the families we serve. Your auction donations will help families pay rent and utilities, provide access to groceries and household essentials, support resident services programming, and help children in our programs reach their educational goals. Your impact matters greatly to us and the vulnerable families we serve.

If you missed the event, make sure to listen to our Chief Development & Communications Officer, Christina’s, rallying cry for us all. You can also view both of the video we premiered at the event on our YouTube channel: Camp Housing Up and Building Thriving Senior Communities.