The Successful Families program provides stable housing and training to help young families succeed.  

Brentwood provides participants the opportunity to rent housing with a rent geared to income subsidy.

Terra provides programs on tenancy, parenting, budgeting, and educational planning.  

The program helps families build skills, resiliency and complete their education in a safe, stable and affordable environment. As the families move through the phases of our program they transition from needing help to a place of self-sufficiency. It’s our goal to see them model those skills to the children they are raising helping us to break the poverty cycle for 2 generations in one program.

The Apartment Program operates in the 29 units of housing within the Brentwood Apartment.  It provides a rent geared to income subsidy to the residents who all have unique needs.  As most of our residents are on AISH the program supports a unique community of tenants who understand each other’s struggles and support one another.

The Legacy Program has been running since 1977 and was the predecessor to the Terra-Brentwood Program.  It currently supports 24 families in Brentwood Homes with rent geared to income subsidies.

All of Brentwood’s rent geared to income programs are self funded. Last year (2016) Brentwood provided over $300,000 in subsidy to those in need.  

By renting 65% of our units at market rents we funded our own maintenance as well as our own subsidy programs for the other 35%. A subsidy program that is at the mercy of annual government funding cannot provide the stability people require to move forward. When government budgets are cut and governments change every 4 years a family is subject to stress and uncertainty that can be a barrier in their journey to self-sufficiency.

We do use government grants and low interest loans to build our units but we believe that we need to ensure they are financially self sufficient for the health of the communities we support. We also believe our model provides the tax payer more value for their housing dollar.   

Our mixed market community also serves to help the families we support in ways that go beyond financial assistance. When a family receives a well maintained unit which is identical to those being offered at market rent it sends a message about how they are valued. As the subsidized units are intermixed with the market units, the subsidized families interact daily as part of a regular community, both of these things help our families in their journey to self-sufficiency.

When a family no longer needs our help they are welcome to stay in their unit. As the subsidized and market units are identical their unit becomes a market unit and the next vacant unit will be the new subsidized unit. This also allows families to give back to the program by simply paying their rent.