LilyPads Housing 2019 Annual Report
I can't believe it is already the New Year and with it comes the conclusion of LilyPads Housing's first year in existence. We have had such and exciting and busy year!
Since opening our doors officially in March 2019, LilyPads Housing has served 15 families, consisting of 52 patients and their family members for 106 nights of lodging. Our families traveled from 14 different counties across our Commonwealth. They were being cared for by 5 different specialties at the Children's Hospital. Their average length of stay in our host homes was 6 days, but our longest stay was 41 days. 67% of our families traveled from over 100 miles away to seek medical care in our community. LilyPads Housing estimates that we saved our families over$19,080 in hotel costs alone. By continuing to grow our network of hosts, we hope to be able to help more families in need in 2020.
With UVA Children's Hospital growing significantly each year, one of the biggest challenges our community faces is meeting the growing housing need. Between July 1st and September 15th of this year, 531 UVA pediatric families were unable to find lodging. During this time, LilyPads received only 4 referrals. Our organization is in a unique position to meet this gap in housing as we are not a brick and mortar facility. We can grow as the housing needs grows, recruiting more hosts from our community. The saddest story for us is hearing that families are sleeping in their cars or the parking garage when we could help. So, we continue to have big plans and ambitions to continue serving our families in need. Any big plans we have in mind, however, start with you. Thank you to all who have, in different ways and in different capacities, given of your time, resources and energy to help move our mission forward. Because of you, we are able to offer a home away from home to families facing the unexpected tonight.
If you would like to read our 2019 Annual Report in full, please click here:
