Danielle Riberio from Great.com interviewed Our House as part of their ‘Great.com Talks With…’ podcast. This series is an antidote to negative news stories that aims to shed light on organizations and experts whose work is making a positive impact on the world.

The homelessness problem in Georgia is so high that homeless families must often leave emergency shelters each month. Despite all the issues these families face, there isn’t sufficient space to support everyone. Because of that, families are trapped in a vicious cycle of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness, making it impossible to escape. In this episode, we talked with Tyese Lawyer, President and CEO of Our House.

We are a nonprofit organization that aims to provide transformative care to end the cycle of homelessness for families. We were founded in 1987 with the goal of creating a safe space for children experiencing homelessness during the day when they were forced to leave shelters. Nowadays, we offer a wide range of programs, including early childhood education, shelter for families with newborns, rapid rehousing, workforce development, healthcare, mental health services, and case management.

Our organization recognizes the impact of the pandemic on homelessness and the economic struggles families face in Georgia. We have seen an increase in the number of families experiencing homelessness and have observed challenges in the early childhood education industry, such as the loss of employees and difficulty finding childcare.

We also highlight the need for additional training opportunities and employment support to help families secure stable housing. Our organization aims to provide comprehensive care and interventions tailored to the individual needs of each family. Thankfully, we’ve expanded and incorporated a wide range of comprehensive support services, fought for free childcare, helped individuals develop crucial life skills, transportation vouchers, and more.

Great.com is an organization that wants to mitigate the global climate crisis by donating all of its profits to climate research initiatives. To generate the most money possible, they are getting creative and thinking outside the box. The organization works in a traditionally harmful and greedy industry — online casinos in New Jersey. They’re taking money that would otherwise go in the pockets of millionaires and moving it to high-impact organizations aimed at solving climate change.

Our House welcomed four new members to our Board of Directors

• Jaqueline Flake, Retired Managing Director at JP Morgan.
• Mike Dunston, Anchor at Spectrum News 1.
• Seth Walker, Physician at Piedmont Atlanta Physicians Group.
• Tanya Hamburger, Community Volunteer.

Leaders in their fields, these new board members bring extensive finance, healthcare, marketing, and communications experience to Our House. “We are tremendously grateful to have their collective expertise on board as we combine with CAPN, wrap up our Next Level, Deeper Impact, New Heights Campaign and advance our current strategic plan,” says Our House President and CEO Tyese Lawyer.

Our House’s Board of Directors has 26 members and is co-chaired by Beth Farnsworth and Mike Martin, Executive Director at Ernst & Young and Chief Marketing Officer at Codesmith respectively. Additional officers include ViceC0-Chair Varun Marneni of CPC Advisors and Matt Flower of Morris Manning & Martin LLP, Treasurer China Slice of PwC, and Secretary Crystal Lassiter of UPS.

Our House: Tell me about yourself/your organization and how you first got involved with Our House? 

Alex Antilla: I work for Delta Air Lines. I’ve worked at Delta for 16 years, and I live in Atlanta with my wife and our three young kids. I’ve been in Atlanta a total of eight years in different stints. I’ve been part of the Our House board for the last three years and really enjoyed my time getting to know the organization and the great cause that Our House champions. Most recently, I was the Co-chair of the Marketing and Fundraising Committee.  

OH: What is the biggest misconception that you had about family homelessness before getting involved with Our House? 

AA: The biggest one? Well, I would start with the first one, which is maybe even some bias against what you see under the highways driving in Atlanta. That leads me to the second one, which is something I learned very early in my time on the board, which is that people are not homeless, people are experiencing homelessness. It’s a cycle that Our House tries to break. But, for many people it is a temporary thing and often they fall into homelessness not because they are homeless people, but because something bad happens in their lives and they don’t have the money, one way or another, to make it, so they end up homeless. And that’s what motivated me to dive all in on this was, “OK well, this is a fixable problem”. Because it is a really tough one but, there’s a path towards helping people get back on their feet and that’s really exciting.  

OH: What aspects of our work interest you the most?  

AA: I mentioned I have three kids and the kid part is the most meaningful to me. Unfortunately, when folks fall on hard times and they end up without a home, they often have families, and kids end up without a house. That is such a sad and shocking situation that I just can’t imagine for my own kids and it makes me feel extremely lucky and privileged to be in the position I’m in and actually just further emphasizes the need to help a great cause and a great organization like this to give back and help people. It’s such a logical thing that Our House does, which was part of what motivated me to get started with the organization as well. If parents don’t have the money for a house, then they need to go get a job or need to learn skills to get more money, but if they have kids that they have to take care of, then that’s an additional burden that maybe prevents that from happening. Our House does a great job providing shelter for the whole family and education for the kids, which allows the parents to get back on their feet.  

OH: How does the mission of Our House align with the core values of Delta Air Lines?  

AA: The biggest one that comes to mind on this is Delta, at the end of the day, we are an airline and there are many airlines in the world, but what we talk about as our “secret sauce” is that we have a track record of really taking care of our people and treating them professionally, but treating them with humanity. And, we firmly believe that if we take really good care of our employees and our people that they, in turn, take care of our customers. And if we have happy customers, then that means they’ll come back and Delta as a company will make more money. I just view that as such a nice parallel with Our House which is you know obviously about helping really, really, really good people that may have just fallen on tough times for a very temporary time in their lives, and if there’s anything we can do to help it’s our mission. We have to do that.  

OH: Why is it important for the corporate community to partner with Our House to end family homelessness?  

AA: There’s an obligation, and it goes back to the privilege and the situation that we are in, but companies and corporations are members of the Community. Delta has made a lot of really big commitments to the community. We’ve pledged 1% of our annual profits go to community related items, that’s something we committed to pre-pandemic. And it’s just it’s an obligation for our company. So, I think it just has to be done actually.  

OH: What message or advice would you share with companies considering a partnership with Our House?  

AA: Do it! That’s the message. That’s the advice. Besides being a great cause and a great organization, and having so much benefit to folks, especially in today’s world where costs are getting out of control and housing prices are through the roof, there’s also some really cool benefits to the corporations that are partnered with Our House. We have a fantastic gala which is hosted annually. We have the Wheels for Walls event which is a great way to partner and get involved in the community. There’s lots of volunteer opportunities at Our House and that’s a great opportunity for corporations to do team building at the shelter, and the list goes on and on. There’s a ton of benefits to the company, to the corporation, for being part of the corporate partnership program. And then the biggest cherry on top is actually helping people in need in the in the process, which is pretty cool. So, my advice, the message is to just do it. 

OH: We appreciate you Alex and Delta Air Lines for all you do to help end family homelessness and make the community a better place for all families.