Our 2019 Annual Report

2019 was a busy year for Jesse Tree. We are on the front lines of our community’s housing crisis, and our staff worked hard last year to prevent as many evictions as is humanly possible.

In 2019, more than 1,000 households contacted us for help and were provided with support. We were able to provide intensive case management and financial assistance to 200 of those households, 535 individuals. Our outcomes show financial assistance as an intervention works: over 97% of people served over the past three years remain in their housing.

Jesse Tree was founded 20 years ago out of conversations with members of the community experiencing homelessness. Our founders discovered that most people can trace homelessness back to a single difficult point in their lives. They realized, "If we can prevent homelessness by providing a hand up to people when they need it the most, why wouldn’t we?" and pooled together money for a rental assistance fund.

Over the years we've served over 8,000 of our neighbors, keeping them in their homes. But it was clear to us that our work needed to grow and expand in line with the housing crisis. In early 2019 we brought on new leadership, staff, and board members, and worked hard to revamp our programs to ensure we could serve more people than ever before.

As we grow, we continue to be authentic to our roots and ambitions. People living outside provided the inspiration for our mission - to prevent homelessness before it starts. Our dreams to keep all of our neighbors housed, and to keep our community safe, stable, and livable for everyone expand every day.

Thank you all for your support this year. We look forward to many more years of this work together.