It would bring low-cost childcare to hundreds — plus jobs. On Hilltop, it’s big news | Opinion
The Multicultural Child and Family Hope Center in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington, has mounted a multi-million dollar capital campaign to expand their location and services.
Grassroots. It’s a description that gets thrown about to the point it’s become almost meaningless.
One-person soup kitchens are labeled that way.
So are well-oiled political campaigns with millions in backing.
Gail Neal probably wouldn’t use such a term to describe the Hilltop childcare center she launched nearly two decades ago, at least as a way to attract attention, even if it was fitting in the truest sense of the word.
She’s too humble, and the spotlight isn’t her thing.
They’re two of Neal’s many qualities I’ve come to appreciate.
Besides, what Neal and her staff at the Multicultural Child and Family Hope Center have accomplished speaks for itself.
Call it what you want.
Neal deals in brass tacks, I’ve learned over the years.
“We’re trying to help families with any kind of need they have,” Neal recently told me by phone, the squeals and laughter of small children serving as background noise.
“Once we build a relationship with people, they tend to trust us,” the center’s founder and executive director added.
Trust – specifically, the essential role it has played in the childcare provider’s growth and the respect it has earned over the years — was a theme of our conversation, for good reason.
Neal officially launched the nonprofit in 2006, in large part to save the jobs of roughly a dozen employees, when the local agency that had been funding the low-income Hilltop childcare center decided to call it quits.
And she didn’t stop there.
Currently, the center employs more than 100 people and provides childcare for roughly 250 children, 98% of whom qualify as low-income.
The nonprofit is also in the midst of an ambitious $40 million capital campaign, with designs on a vast expansion.
The development effort would double the number of children served at center and bring more than 100 new jobs to Hilltop, Neal said.
Construction of a new building would open up at least 242 spots, she indicated.
Plans call for the 32,000-square-foot facility to be built not far from the nonprofit’s flagship location on South 19th near Sprague — and named in honor of Cora Whitley, Neal’s late mother, who died in 2014.
In total, the project is estimated to cost roughly $40 million.
According to Peter Cameron, the center’s special projects manager, about a quarter of it has already been raised, largely from state and federal funding sources, with another $8.5 million tentatively earmarked, pending approval.
Cameron said the project plans to utilize the federal New Market Tax Credit program to cover roughly 20% of development costs, helping it to pencil out.
“It will make such a difference for our community,” Neal told me.
“We feel bad when people come to us and we don’t have the space to help them.”
MORE THAN JUST CHILDCARE
Neal isn’t wrong about the potential positive impact of essentially doubling the size of her staff and the number of children the nonprofit is able to serve.
Just look at what the center already manages with the hard-fought resources it currently has at its disposal.
In addition to low-income childcare, the center cares for children removed from a home by the Department of Health and Human Services through a contract with the state.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, a program the nonprofit developed has doled out millions in rental assistance to area residents in partnership with Pierce County to help prevent evictions.
The center operates a preschool for at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds and their families through the state’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program.
It also provides supervised parent-child visitation services, performs youth homeless outreach in the area and at its most recent back-to-school event distributed some 650 backpacks.
Did I mention the addiction recovery cafe the center operates, the parenting classes and the new food assistance program, set up to look like “a real grocery store, not a food bank” according to Neal?
Frankly, I could keep going.
I’m sure I missed a few things.
“When we first started thinking about it, it was really just focused on we need to make more space for children during the day for childcare slots — and affordable childcare slots, because childcare is so expensive for families,” said Neal’s 35-year-old son, Bryan, who also works at the nonprofit.
“Going through the pandemic, we started doing so many more services, from our food bank to our parenting classes to doing rental assistance,” Bryan Neal added.
“We’ve just been trying to help our community, and right now we can’t be there for all the people who need it.”
HISTORY OF RESILIENCY
I first met Neal roughly five years ago, standing outside the old News Tribune facility on State Street.
Neal had a long-running deal with the TNT that provided her space in the building to store an assortment of supplies and donations the center collects for parents and families it serves, from clothes to baby gates and diapers.
When a need arose, or a new shipment came in, Neal and members of her staff would back in a pickup truck and get to work.
All part of a day’s work.
I stumbled on it by chance, stepping outside on a quick break.
I was immediately impressed, and my admiration has only grown since then.
My first official visit to the center came in March 2020, when I saw how the most essential of essential services was frantically trying to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, Neal and her staff weren’t sure how it would all come together, but realized they had no choice — displaying the same spirit and attitude that’s carried them through good times and bad.
I returned six months later to discover a bustling center guiding roughly 60 low-income children through the first weeks of remote learning, masks, safety protocols and all.
Before plenty of people had emerged from the safety and comfort of work-from-home isolation, Neal and the center’s staff had devised a way to adapt, preserve and thrive.
The center filled a critical role on Hilltop, providing support for kids who desperately needed it — and the ability for their parents to go out and earn a paycheck.
“I couldn’t imagine how I would have been able to do virtual learning,” Turner Cagle told me at the time.
Cagle, who experienced homelessness as a child growing up in the area, was among the Multicultural Center’s first employees.
He’s also one of many who has worked at the center for more than a decade, he told me.
“It’s very important for me to be able to provide for a kid who might be going through the same circumstances that I went through,” Cagle said in September 2020.
“This right here is learning, being resilient,” he added, gesturing to the masked students around him.
It’s a trait the center and its staff know better than most.
CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT
My story and experience aren’t unique.
The center has earned plenty of supporters since it opened, including prominent elected officials like U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, who fought to include $4 million in a transportation and housing funding bill that received bipartisan Senate passage this month.
Murray visited the center earlier this year, her office told The News Tribune.
In a statement provided to the paper, Murray described it as an opportunity to see the nonprofit’s “incredible work firsthand.”
“The Multicultural Child and Family Hope Center is a pillar of the community in Tacoma, providing high-quality and badly needed child care for local families, along with a wealth of other supportive services,” said Murray.
“When families can’t find child care they can afford, it hurts families, businesses, and our entire economy — the ripple effects are enormous, and we see them everywhere,” Washington’s longest-tenured Senator added.
U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, who has strong Tacoma ties, also holds the nonprofit childcare provider in high regard — which should come as no surprise.
Along with Murray, Sen. Maria Cantwell and U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, Strickland has pushed for the inclusion of funds in spending bills earmarked for the center’s expansion.
Strickland first visited the nonprofit during her time as Tacoma’s mayor, she said last week by phone from Washington. D.C.
Tacoma’s former mayor said the support that the center has earned from Washington’s Congressional delegation is warranted.
“I am acutely aware of the need for high quality childcare in the United States. We’re the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t provide a consistent federal subsidy for those services,” Strickland said.
“If we think about having a healthy, vibrant community, we have to take care of children and their families, and this facility just does so much,” Strickland added.
BREAKING GROUND
On Hilltop, Neal and her staff are watching the calendar closely.
With fundraising and grant-writing efforts in full swing, the Multicultural Center is on pace to meet the deadline for construction to begin early next year, Neal said.
As long as things go as planned, of course.
Having started with next-to-nothing — other than a vision and the drive to see it through — Neal is no stranger to challenges.
She knows it won’t be easy, but she’s fueled by the unmet need visible on the faces of parents and children she encounters every day.
With the optimism of someone who’s had to scratch and claw for almost everything, Neal said it’s really very simple, as it has been since the beginning: The only option is to keep fighting, she told me.
“This is the biggest thing we’ve ever tried to pull off,” Neal acknowledged.
“Without a doubt.”
“I honestly think it’s going to happen. I really do,” she added.
“Our community and our families need it — and we know that.”
By: Matt Driscoll
Source: The News Tribune