By Suzanne Goldsmith
Columbus Monthly
A pilot program that helps low-income families move to better neighborhoods will soon expand its reach.
In November, Families Flourish, an initiative that creates opportunities for low-income families to move to neighborhoods where they have a chance to thrive, announced a big expansion. The small-scale pilot program, in which 10 families are enrolled, will ramp up to include 100 families, offering them three years of rental support in neighborhoods deemed high opportunity, along with focused coaching to help them flourish in their new homes.
“You’ve heard the phrase, ‘a ZIP code determines your life’s destiny?’” says Amy Klaben, Families Flourish’s founder and project facilitator. Klaben, a former partner at the law firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, served 15 years as CEO and president of Homeport. “We’ve seen, from a lot of research, the benefits of moving to opportunity.” In fact, several other cities have mobility initiatives that allow people who live in areas of concentrated poverty to use housing vouchers to move to better resourced areas. But no such program existed in Columbus.
