The Verde Valley Homeless Coalition and the Greater Cottonwood Chamber of Commerce celebrated the grand opening of VVHC’s new Friendship House for transitional housing on Thursday, March 28, with a ribbon-cutting.
VVHC broke ground for the site of the Friendship House in November 2022 and ran a campaign to raise funds to accommodate the rising cost of materials to supplement the federal funding the organization received.
Attendees were invited to tour the building, which has six bedrooms, two bathrooms and a shared living room and kitchen.
Christian Oliva del Rio, president and CEO of the Greater Cottonwood Chamber of Commerce, spoke about the importance of this facility for the community and its greater purpose for Cottonwood.
“We already know that homelessness is rampant throughout the United States,” VVHC Executive Director Rhonda Bishop said. “In Cottonwood, it’s really bad because we don’t have any housing and we have no surplus housing, especially for people that are on fixed incomes or have low wage earning capabilities. Transitional housing really helps get them out of the shelter process and into a housing situation.”
Bishop said that she thinks many of us take the skills that we utilize every day in our own homes for granted, such as making a bed properly or running a dishwasher. She claimed that those who don’t live in a traditional housing setting often forget those skills and that this transitional housing unit will help them relearn them.
“I was reminded that what we’re doing is something that’s so important,” Bishop said. “People will come out of the shelter setting, go into transitional housing and then hopefully by the time they’re ready to transition into permanent housing, other [housing] options are in the works and so they’ll have an option to go to.”
“We recognize that in order to properly see somebody be successful in permanent housing, they have to have a lot of support, and without that support, they will fail in traditional housing,” Bishop said. “This situation is a new avenue to give them that option.”
The coalition also has an emergency overnight shelter and a day center.
