One of The Hub’s core goals is to act as a convener and connector for community development organizations and local leaders working to effect change in their communities. Over the years, The Hub has brought together thought partners, funders, organizations, and community leaders to share resources and information.
James Birt, founder of Housed-Up, Inc., has been participating in meetings, convenings, and group sessions with The Hub over the past couple of years to learn more about the funding and nonprofit ecosystems of West Virginia. In starting his organization focused on helping the unhoused community in Fayette County, James needed help learning where to go for funding, who to talk to, and which people were working towards the same goal.
“The Hub really connected me in,” Birt says about his experience at the Small Communities, Big Solutions Conference at the University of Charleston in 2022.
For Birt, The Hub’s events and convenings play an important role in networking for people and organizations across the state. He began participating in multiple Hub programs and networks, including serving on the Oak Hill team for The Hub’s Communities of Achievement Program (HubCAP), and attending events and federal funding trainings through the Southern WV USDA Rural Partners Network. Through these programs, he was able to learn about grant funding opportunities, the federal earmark process, and organizations that could help push his work forward in a transformational way. In September 2023, Housed-Up Inc. was awarded $50,000 from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) INSPIRE Initiative.
“[Small Communities, Big Solutions] was the first time I heard about the Grant Resource Center,” Birt explains. “That was a really big connector piece. That is what I mean by the networking that The Hub facilitates. Learning about the Grant Resource Center is what led me to winning the ARC grant, so that networking piece and learning about that organization and what they do was crucial. I don’t know where I would be without that. I know I wouldn’t have given up but I wouldn’t be nearly as far as I am now.”
Birt’s work in Fayette County is a personal project that is influenced by his past as an unhoused person. He recalls spending a couple of years train-hopping around the West Coast after leaving West Virginia. It was during that time that he met his partner, McKenna, and the two came back to West Virginia where they started a family.
After researching the unhoused crisis in West Virginia, Birt knew he had to do something to help people.
“I decided that while we were going to stay here, I wanted to take my homeless experience for that couple of years, because there were some good things and some bad things and some traumatic things that happened,” Birt remembers. “I wanted to take that whole experience and use it to make a positive impact in my community. Do something that really meant something.”
Birt found that West Virginia needed housing options for low- to no-income renters and that Fayette County was one place with the most need. Leaning on the writings of Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, Birt found motivation in the quote, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”
“So if housing is such a big problem I guess that there is an opportunity for an organization focused on housing to exist,” Birt says. “It creates that kind of opportunity. That’s how Housed Up morphed into becoming what it is.”
Throughout his work, Birt found himself routinely in the room with The Hub, our partners, and communities learning from those around him.
“The Hub is good at bringing you into the fold and introducing you to all of the people that are working in your field and that can help get you to where you are going,” Birt says. “That has been helpful. Knowing how to do something is one thing but networking has been a crucial element and The Hub has been good in helping me facilitate the network and connections that I need to do what I am doing.”
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