FOX 29 covers unique partnership with RHD’s One Step Away and Berger Rental Communities to help Ram get housing
June 17, 2019
FOX 29 Philadelphia and billypenn.com covered a unique partnership between RHD’s One Step Away and Berger Rental Communities’ “Hope & Door” project, helping Ram get housing. Ram is a vendor with One Step Away, Philadelphia’s street magazine, which provides a voice of advocacy and source of meaningful income for people experiencing homelessness and poverty. The “Hope & Door” project provides housing and rental assistance, and seeks to work with Philadelphia homelessness providers to find people who have the best chance to be successful. See the story by FOX 29’s Bill Anderson here
Ram demonstrated commitment and work ethic as a vendor with One Step Away, helping make him the first candidate for the program. “Hope & Door” seeks to work primarily with families, providing stability and a homelike environment to help people have the best possible chance to break the cycle of homelessness. Ram moved in with his daughter, Symphony. The “Hope & Door” project outfitted the apartment with furniture, clothes and supplies for Symphony, and a fully-stocked refrigerator.
“Basically, we’re looking to find people who have been established, and then somehow found themselves homeless. We want to be able to help someone establish themselves again,” Allison Wainwright, executive assistant at Berger Rental Communities, told billypenn.com in a story titled “Property company gives Philly homeless free apartments for a year.”
Ramson now has a two-bedroom of his own. He signed a year-long lease last week — one that compelled a rent payment of exactly $0 each month. That’s thanks to a new partnership between a private rental company and the homelessness magazine One Step Away.
Ram, as the South Philly native prefers to be called, has been vending for OSA for eight years. He’s the first to benefit from the new housing program — he and his daughter Symphony moved in last Tuesday.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Ram told Billy Penn as explored his new digs. “To have my own place, I’m thankful and I’m grateful.”
Read this story in billypenn.com here
Earlier: billypenn.com features “Heard,” One Step Away’s new podcast. Read the story here, and listen to the podcast here