For the last two years, a group of volunteer residents along the Route 1 corridor called Welcome Home Neighbor have worked to assist families in need who are moving to the area.
In 2022, Jamila Larson and Mark Betancourt met a mother and two kids moving from a shelter to an empty apartment on Mother’s Day weekend.
The two contacted the HOPE in Hyattsville and Nurturing Parents email listservs to see who could help them get situated, and Larson said they were “overwhelmed with the response.” Since then, they’ve helped a little more than one family each month.
“We’ve had strangers donate food baskets to welcome families home, assemble little home libraries for children’s rooms, and buy clothes and baby bassinets,” Larson told the Hyattsville Wire. “We want families to have the basic tools they need to do the hard work of running a household alone with as many comforts of home as possible.”
Larson’s day job is as executive director of the Playtime Project, which provides children’s programs in shelters in D.C. and Prince George’s County. But Welcome Home Neighbor is not a registered non-profit; instead, it focuses on rounding up and delivering resources with low overhead.
“We just do what we can on the weekends as volunteers,” Larson added. “We’re all parents with busy lives doing what others did to help us out along the way.”
If you’re interested in helping, email Welcome Home Neighbor at neighborwelcomehome@gmail.
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