Nonprofits Create Community is NIA’s theme for 2026, as we celebrate the ways that nonprofits come through for their communities in spite of all the challenges facing them. In this series, meet some NIA-insured nonprofits who share their stories of creating community in their own words.
Meet Sonoma Applied Villages Services of Sonoma County, CA
Adrienne Lauby, Executive Director of Sonoma Applied Villages Services, explains:
“We believe everyone has a right to a home, including those who are homeless. This is a community matter requiring a community solution.
We expand partnerships to end homelessness, which benefits quality of life and well-being of the whole community.”
How does your nonprofit and your mission create community for the people and places you serve?
Addressing homelessness on the individual and policy/funding levels.
“We talk to homeless people. We help them. We give a guy a coat. We sign a woman up for SNAP (food stamps). We get someone onto multiple housing lists.
We navigate the barriers to get people into the local shelter. We set up pet vaccinations. We drive folks, who are now formerly homeless, to their new apartments. We call them up a week or two later to see if they’ve gotten that shower curtain.
We work with governments and other homeless service agencies to make things happen on the individual and policy/funding level.”
What are your nonprofit’s biggest challenges or obstacles to creating community?
Limited housing supply and persistent stereotypes and perceptions.
“We are so small and the available housing is so limited. We want individual homeless people and the larger homeless community to be seen and to act as part of the community.
We work on this every day from both directions. But homeless people are alienated from the housed community because of stereotypes and the everyday treatment they receive.
The best way to create community is to have the housing to immediately eliminate the chasm that limits everyone from seeing the other as ‘other.’
Biggest challenge: The lack of safe legal camps for temporary ‘housing’ and cheap housing that low-income people can easily afford.”
