Good morning.

Welcome to the October 16th Evansville Land Bank meeting.

Due to lack of a quorum, we will be canceling the meeting, but

one

of the applicants wants to say a few words on her organization.

Jessica.

Hi everybody, how are you all doing?

Good morning.

My name is Jessica Angelique, and I am the founder and CEO of foster care in the U.S.

Incorporated.

And so I think do you pass out the thank you?

Okay.

I have some you all have some information in front of you, so I won't talk at length.

So because I have to do this again.

And that's okay.

That is fine with me.

But I did want to kind of let you know, for those of you who aren't familiar with our organization, uh, just kind of a little bit about who we are again.

Um we are 501c3 located here in Vanderburgh County.

Um we received our 501c3 on June 14th, uh, 2019.

Um but before that, uh I've been doing this for a long time, actually almost 40 years, uh, so helping young people achieve housing and helping with services and resources.

But it wasn't until we received our 501c3 and got the donation from ECHO Housing Corporation that we built the first transitional supportive housing home here specific to uh homeless youth.

So we literally take them right off the street uh and they are able to live in that housing for up to three years while we work on them, uh work with them on services and resources for self towards self-sufficiency.

And since we since uh achieving our uh receiving our uh 501c3, we have been able to help a hundred, over a hundred, um take a hundred youth off the streets here in Vanderburgh County uh who have achieved uh permanent housing and they still have it.

So uh it takes a while, it takes a long time.

This is not an overnight thing.

Um sometimes things are good, sometimes things are bad.

Uh but uh they do achieve it.

Um and so this acquisition of of land uh for us, I believe it's 313, um, East ICL, um, will go towards supportive housing.

Um and that is probably gonna be one uh again one of the first of its kind because what that housing will be um is a partnership.

And so what I'd like to do with that is build supportive housing um for individuals here, and I would like to give two units.

It's gonna be a seven unit, so I'm proposing a seven-unit uh apartment complex, a small one, uh, and two units will go to Aurora to address chronic homelessness here in Vandenberg County.

Two units will go to Echo Housing Corporation, um, one to address veteran homelessness uh and one to address family homelessness, and then three units will be for foster care in the U.S.

to address youth homelessness.

So one project is addressing all forms of homelessness here in Vanderburgh County.

So I'm very excited about that.

Like I got goosebumps just talking about it.

Um I'm very, very, very excited about that.

And so um this is just step one.

So

just what exactly is supportive housing, what kind of services?

So along with supportive housing, the services that come with that is case management for the individuals that are living there.

So ECHO would take um have their case management for their veteran and their their family.

We would take over case management for ours and so on and so forth.

Um but it's case management, things like uh employment uh services, mental health care, um, addressing wrap around services, you got it.

Um, addressing food insecurity, making sure that the residents that live there have the things and and services and resources that they need to continue to um prosper um and never experience homelessness again.

No questions, just a comment because uh of course I'm familiar with foster care in the U.S.

And I think it's a really great program.

I remember when you started or when you when you first were on the scene and when you were a CDBG recipient and how you grown from then until now.

And I think the pro like I say, the program's great, and so you should be very proud of what you do in the community for to address youth homelessness.

And thank you.

And what you should also know is we have been working.

Um I have an executive assistant now.

Um thank you, Jesus.

Uh Nancy Miller.

And so we have been working on the um accreditation piece for our classes, the IET project classes.

Of course, we have financial literacy, financial wealth investment.

We have partnered with Ivy Tech to offer entrepreneurship 101, 102, and 103 for our our young people in our our project.

And so we are trademarked and copyrighted.

So working on the franchise piece, actually.

Florida, Alabama.