ARCH AmeriCorps Members, Laura Peapenburg & Bailey Norris, Featured in Community Voices Magazine

Two of ARCH’s AmeriCorps Intake workers have been featured in an article in East Tennessee State University’s Community Voices, a magazine produced by ETSU’s office of Diversity and Inclusion.

The article is titled, ARCH Appalachian Regional Coalition on Homelessness: Point of view: A discussion on diversity and intake from two ETSU students who are ARCH, AmeriCorps workers, written by Elizabeth Strong Cloyd, photo by Starr Sariego.

Here is an excerpt:

In any town or city in this country you will see homeless people sitting on corners, sleeping in stairwells and alleys, hunkering under highway overpasses, or carrying their belongings to a safer, dryer, place.

We respond to the homeless in our towns in a myriad of ways from compassion to annoyance to disdain. But the number of people everywhere with housing insecurity is growing. And homelessness is a long term problem that requires complex, long term solutions.

This year, in 2023, the Appalachian Regional Coalition on Homelessness, ARCH is marking twenty years working in our region to help marginalized and displaced people find stability and permanent housing.

Aside from local churches, ARCH typically provides the first people and resources folks in this area encounter when they present with housing insecurity, food insecurity, unmet medical and mental health care needs, domestic violence crises and much more.

“ARCH is the lead agency for all of the providers that administer the homeless program. And our role as that lead is that we are tasked with implementing and carrying out a coordinated entry system; with the idea that we have to make it accessible to all and at every location,” explained Director, Anne Cooper.

For ARCH, diversity has always been a big part of the conversation while serving eight counties in our part of Appalachia. And practicing inclusivity is crucial in connecting displaced people with resources they need.

“We connect them with the benefits that are necessary to stabilize. We also connect them with mainstream benefits; those are benefits that you don’t have to be homeless to get. Those are things like food stamps, and social security and Tenncare,” Cooper said.

Taking them in

Two AmeriCorps workers at ARCH who are also current ETSU students, Laura Peapenburg and Bailey Norris, shared some of their observations on the coordinated entry system that works like an emotionally sensitive survey during client intake.

“The intake actual process for us is more so a survey to figure out their current situation. And asking, ‘what are you comfortable telling us?’ What should we know to help you get the best help that you need?’ as well as answering questions that are required by (Housing and Urban Development) HUD,” Peapenburg explained.

Click here to read the rest of the story in Community Voices Magazine. (Scroll down to the second story.)

Click here to read the entire April 2023 issue of Community Voices.