The local leaders were concerned about the growing number of families in the area in need of emergency shelter. At the time, Pierce County lacked an emergency shelter and shelters in neighboring St. Croix County were unable to help all those in need, so Mottaz and friends established Our Neighbors’ Place (ONP) to provide shelter and support services to families in need and help them move toward self-sufficiency.
The group created a day center which provides referrals to social service agencies, help creating or updating a resume, access to laundry facilities, as well as transitional housing for employed persons.
And because children make up a large proportion of persons in need, Mottaz and friends established the Kinnickinnic Backpack Program which provides schoolchildren with backpacks full of nutritious food on Fridays and vouchers for fresh foods to tide them over for the weekend when they don’t have access to school breakfast and lunch programs.
But, River Falls still didn't have a homeless shelter despite having homeless persons in the area -- many of which are families with children.
Money for homeless shelters in rural areas is hard to come by because funds often go to bigger cities where there is a greater concentration of need. As the fund-raiser, Mottaz needed more than anecdotal evidence of hardship to make her case.
She needed hard facts.
So she turned to the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and its recently released Wisconsin Poverty Report, which showed that St. Croix County had the seventh-fastest growing poverty rate in the state, exceeding 12 percent.
IRP researchers and programmers used an innovative combination of census data, unemployment figures, and food assistance program participation, and a broader matrix of resources, to map out poverty across the state of Wisconsin and pinpoint areas of most rapidly growing need.
Using these hard facts, Mottaz was able to receive grants from the Otto Bremer and Andersen corporate foundations, which were contingent on matching funds, and a loan from the City of River Falls. This helped launch the foundation of funding for a capital campaign.
Mottaz said she used the Wisconsin Poverty Report countless times when in fund-raising for the shelter, at council meetings, church groups, and their fundraising letter. The Wisconsin Poverty Report statistics countered the perception of many in Pierce County who were convinced there were no homeless people in their community.
The efforts of Mottaz and Our Neighbors’ Place paid off in a successful campaign that enabled them to establish the first homeless shelter in Pierce County. Their first clients were ten children and five adults.
The next steps for ONP is to continue making their case on behalf of struggling families in order to pay off their loan. The Institute for Research on Poverty hopes to be of further service to their cause.