Housing Non-Profit ‘Coming Home’ to Norcross

The non-profit organization that handles 60 percent of the transitional housing in Gwinnett County is moving its office to Norcross, its CEO and President said. 

The IMPACT! Group, which was founded in Norcross in 1993, will move its operations and 10 staff to a small brick home at Beaver Ruin Road and Price Place, near the . The non-profit has owned the home for some time but has done business from 1255 Lakes Pkwy in Lawrenceville. 

The Group has two divisions: one for transitional housing and one for education, like home ownership and foreclosure prevention classes. The non-profit receives 30 to 40 percent of its funding from competitive grants from the federal HUD program, according to Tom Merkel, President and CEO. That money goes directly to families to provide transitional housing in times of crisis. In 2010, the group touched 5,000 families, Merkel said.

It has become harder to fulfill the other roughly 60 percent of their funding, which comes from private organizations and “the goodness of people’s hearts.”  In tough times, people just don’t give, even though there’s more need, creating a quite a Catch 22 for the non-profit.

“The need has gone through the roof but the money has fallen through the floor,” said Merkel.

The face of the homelessness has certainly changes with skyrocketing foreclosures and tough economic times. It used to be that the average applicant was a single mother escaping a spousal abuse situation, said Merkel. Now, he sees more and more families who have lost their income or whose homes have gone into foreclosure.

“The average age of a homeless person in Gwinnett is 9 years old. Most people think of a homeless bum on the streets of Atlanta, but that’s not it in Gwinnett,” said Merkel.

Merkel recalls a story from a local church. When the collection was taken, the members would put their donations in envelopes, and then place them in the basket. The church was puzzled to find blank envelopes--then realized that many people in the congregation had lost their homes, their jobs and had nothing to give. But they were too embarrassed to let their neighbors know. The point, it seems, of the anecdote is that the need is real in Gwinnett, even if it isn’t on the surface.

Merkel said the group has a high success rate—92 percent after 18 months, he claims—because of the tough rules to get in and, mostly, because of the expertise of his staff. “My staff practices tough love,” he quipped.

Families must have been without a home for three months to qualify—and they must have a job. The IMPACT! Group requires drug testing and does random employment checks. 

The new location seems to make sense on many levels. The IMPACT! Group partners with the Gwinnett Village and A. Worley Brown Boys & Girls Club in Norcross for its educational courses.  All of the housing facilities utilized by the IMPACT! Group are in the Norcross area.

“And the majority of our customers are in the Norcross and Meadowcreek clusters,” said Merkel. “This really move is really going back to our roots.”