Hopelink unveiled its first-ever impact report last week to a roomful of its partners, local public officials and community leaders who all have a hand in supporting the Redmond-based community action agency.

As she addressed the crowd at the Redmond Marriott Town Center on March 24, Hopelink Vice President of Community Services Meghan Altimore’s passion poured forth as she noted: “Everything is grounded by our vision, our vision of a community free of poverty. Our mission is to promote self-sufficiency, to really help people make lasting change, and so every effort that we have has got to be pointed in that direction.”

According to Hopelink CEO Lauren Thomas, 86,000 people in the organization’s service area of northeast King County are in poverty and eligible for its services. In 2014, the organization served more than 60,000 clients through support and transportation programs. The report, titled “Building a Stronger Community,” focused on the 22,086 clients who benefitted from support programs like emergency financial assistance ($628,265 total), heat and energy assistance ($2,644,225 total) and food assistance (2,183,286 meals).

“Hopelink is focused on growing our effectiveness and our impact,” Thomas said. On the food side, they hope to increase the number of people they serve from 15,479 to 21,000 over the next 10 years. The report notes that 581 households and 677 adults completed/exited a Hopelink program last year — Thomas said they’d like to add an additional 1,000 people per year to that number.

Thomas said Hopelink plans to do this through a systematic approach, working with all their partners through community activities and more.

“Imagine that as you walk around the Eastside, what people could be going through as you walk down the street,” said Thomas, who added that the statistics tell them about the power of data and the power of numbers. “It helps us recognize the need and chart the course toward what we need to address in the future.”

The 16-page report also notes that one in seven northeast King County residents live in poverty; 37 percent of Hopelink clients are children; and the living wage for a family of four in King County is $74,000 per year, yet 86 percent of the households Hopelink serves earn less than $30,000 per year

“(The report is) really only half the story, because at the end of the day, it’s all about people helping other people,” Thomas said. “We live in a very generous, bountiful, compassionate community and we want to be sure that we are giving (everyone) the opportunity to use those services and to not go away either hungry or homeless or in need. So that’s why we’re here. And that’s why this report matters and that’s why you all matter.”

Altimore added: “We help (clients) achieve stability because that is the foundation on which everything else is built. We’re helping them have the resilience that they need, we’re helping them become employable and we’re helping them make sure that they know how to handle the resources that they have, that they have the same amount going out as they have coming in … and that we’re helping them increase that amount over time.”

Out of five Hopelink northeast King County service centers in 2014, the Kirkland/Northshore center served 8,065 clients, the Bellevue center served 5,598 clients, the Redmond center served 3,928 clients, the Shoreline center served 3,178 clients and the Sno-Valley center served 1,755 clients. Presently, Hopelink has five housing centers in Redmond (Avondale Park, 61 units), Bellevue (Hopelink Place, 20 units), Bothell (Heritage Park, 15 units), Kenmore (Kenmore Family Shelter, nine units) and Duvall (Duvall Place, eight units). Kenmore Family Shelter is the only emergency family shelter in north King County and Hopelink will finish renovations and two additional units there by August, Altimore said.

“I think the report is very important because it’s an accountability to the community for the work that Hopelink’s doing,” said Kirkland Mayor Amy Walen, who attended the meeting. “Hopelink is supported in a lot of ways by our community with donors, their board members’ activities and cities contribute, so it’s good to have solid numbers showing that that investment is paying off. I think that whole idea of getting people ready for employment, all of the programs that they have that are setting people in motion towards their future is really impressive.”

Walen added that it’s important for all Eastside cities to work together to solve the poverty issue, which she said would surely be on the agenda at upcoming joint council meetings with Kirkland, Redmond and Bellevue.

Redmond City Council member Byron Shutz also attended the Hopelink meeting and said that he was surprised that 60 percent of Hopelink’s clients sit at the $30,000 median income level.

Lack of affordable housing stands in the way, he said. “We need to obviously have a stronger economy, more jobs. But on the Eastside, affordable housing is a fundamental underlying issue and that goes along with our land-use policies over the last 50 years, spreading things out, creating infrastructure that it can’t really afford and then also drives up the price of land and price of housing.”