February 10, 2025
Lisa Culp regularly sees hope blossom in women experiencing homelessness. She watches as they gain confidence, some say, for the first time in their lives. She cheers them as they secure jobs.
What Culp and her team at the nonprofit Women’s Empowerment also witness, though, is how often graduates of their employment readiness programs struggle to locate permanent housing that fits within their budgets.
piece really threatened the overall mission of Women’s Empowerment, said Culp, the organization’s founder and executive director.
To solve this, the organization leased a portion of an existing multifamily development and turned it into a transitional workforce housing community called Trellis Gardens. Women’s Empowerment subleases small cottages in Trellis Gardens to 16 graduate families at a time. Since some residents are fleeing violent relationships, the organization does not provide the address for this housing.
The first group of families moved into Trellis Gardens in May 2023 after Sacramento County supervisors awarded Women’s Empowerment a $3 million grant to get started. The funds came from the $65.1 billion in direct aid appropriated to counties across the United States through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
Since then, the Kelly Foundation, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, the National Council of Jewish Women, philanthropists in Sacramento Impact Partners and others have committed tens of thousands of dollars toward furnishing units, improving the grounds, housing the families and providing them with the services they need to make a successful transition into market-rate housing.
Like many of the residents who moved in when Trellis Gardens opened, Amber Finch used her time there to stabilize her finances and find a second job and permanent housing. In September, she signed a lease for a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment that she now shares with her son and daughter.
She used time at Trellis Gardens to find a job
Before moving into Trellis Gardens, Finch tried rooming with a friend for a while, but then Finch’s mother fell and broke her hip. So, Finch packed up her young family’s belongings and went to live with her mom to care for her.
“I got really complacent and just stagnant,” said Finch, 41. “I wasn’t really doing anything with my life. I was just living day by day. I didn’t have any goals.”
Her training at Women’s Empowerment had ingrained in her the value of setting goals and continuing to look for ways to grow and advance in life. The nonprofit educates and empowers women who are experiencing homelessness with the skills and confidence necessary to get a job, gain a home for themselves and for their children, and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Seven years ago, Finch said, she went into a drug rehabilitation program and overcame her addiction to methamphetamine. She learned about Women’s Empowerment’s job readiness training as she was about to exit that program and decided to apply.
When she got in and met the staff and heard from the many speakers who came to uplift and teach them, Finch said, she was blown away.
“I was extremely shocked that there was a program with amazingly genuine people who really wanted to just be there and help support women who were struggling through life,” she said, “and to see them wanting to break down any barriers that were in our way.”
She developed a network of friends through the program, she said, and they encouraged one another to keep trying to better themselves.
Finch’s mother had qualified for an In-Home Supportive Services worker, so Finch sought and won approval to do that job. Their living space, however, wasn’t safe for her mom or for her children.
She had kept in touch with Culp, and she told her about what was going on. Since Trellis Gardens was opening, Culp suggested she apply for a cottage. Around the same time, Finch said, her mom found a new place to live.
Finch said she felt extremely fortunate to get a cottage at Trellis Gardens, a one-bedroom apartment. She slept on a pull-out couch in the living room, while her children, now ages 2 and 7, slept in bunk beds in the bedroom.
Women built a community kids were sad to leave
“It was perfect for just me and my kids,” she said. “We built a little family with the community of the other women there, and it was really nice. My kids were super sad when we moved.”
Finch has continued to work a few hours daily as one of her mom’s home health workers, but just after moving into Trellis Gardens, she found work in a call center and eventually moved into full-time work there.
Her employer has been extremely supportive, she said, even helping her to pay off expensive transmission work on her car. Recently, she said, one of her supervisors invited her to apply for a management position.
Culp said that program graduates can stay up to two years in the transitional housing at Trellis Gardens, but most of the women who moved there in May 2023 have already found permanent housing.
The team at Women’s Empowerment provides a variety of training opportunities to the women at Trellis Gardens including a nationally recognized program called Ready to Rent that educates attendees on how to break through barriers to leasing. They bring in SAFE Credit Union to teach a 12-week course on successful money management with financial institutions. They also are always on the hunt for potential jobs that offer training that could increase their graduates’ earning potential.
Although Women’s Empowerment has run Trellis Gardens for only a short time, Culp said she feels it’s already making a difference.
“We had a graduate 2.5 years ago, and she was living in one of the (homeless) encampments,” Culp said. “She was coming to class every day. She got a job. She was working, but still living in the encampment, because she still didn’t have enough money and she still hadn’t rebuilt her credit up enough.”
Culp said the woman told her that a man at the encampment had asked her why she was going to work every day when she was still living in a tent right next to his. It can be hard to maintain motivation, Culp said, when the opportunity for permanent housing never seems to come.
Trellis Gardens has improved the odds that women in the current job-readiness class at Women’s Empowerment will have a place to stay, Culp said, because it’s added 16 potential units to the region’s transitional housing units. They also charge rent well below market rates to allow the women in their program to save up money for security deposits and emergencies.
“It has changed the organization and made it more hopeful,” Culp said. “Now, when we have families, we have a place to send them and not just call 211 and put them on a waiting list.”