Our House

Our House is a launch pad for homeless individuals and families who are ready to get their lives back on track.

“We aren’t just ‘three hots and a cot,'” said Executive Director Georgia Mjartan. “We expect a great commitment from our residents, and that commitment is to work, to be drug- and alcohol-free and to save 75 percent of their earnings.”

Ninety-five percent of Our House clients arrive unemployed; 73 percent of those have jobs when they leave.

“We’re absolutely ready and willing and able to work with anyone who wants to work,” Mjartan said.

New clients are given two weeks and plenty of help to find full-time, permanent employment. There is no time limit on how long an individual can stay, but the shelter is not so comfortable that people want to stay there indefinitely.

By the time Our House clients move out, they can have $5,000 to $10,000 in savings. “And that’s enough to get a fresh start and never be in the position of being homeless again,” Mjartan said. One woman saved enough for a down payment on a house, going from homeless to homeowner in a single step.

Our House need never be homeless either. The organization, which was incorporated in September 1987, moved into a $1.4 million facility on East Roosevelt Road in Little Rock in December 2005. The facility accommodates all of Our House’s programs under one roof: an 80-bed emergency shelter; a 39-bed transitional shelter; an education and job training center equipped with 40 state-of-the-art, Internet-connected computers; free child care; and a feeding program that serves more than 45,000 meals a year.

In less than a year, the facility was completely paid for, Mjartan said.

Our House has 12 employees and 11 job trainees on staff, and it houses 120 people on an average day. Its annual budget was just shy of $1 million in 2006. Of that, 55 percent comes from private gifts.

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