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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORSÒ
The Voice For Real Estate®
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REALTORÒ FROM BLUE BELL WINS NATIONAL AWARD FOR WORK WITH HOMELESS FAMILIES
CHICAGO (October 23, 2008) – RealtorÒ Lei Barry, a sales associate with Keller Williams Real Estate in Blue Bell, Pa., is one of five individuals chosen by the National Association of RealtorsÒto receive REALTORÒ Magazine’s 2008 Good Neighbor Award. Barry won the award for providing temporary housing for thousands of people through the Inter-Faith Hospitality Network, which helps homeless families get back on their feet.
“RealtorsÒ play an important leadership role in building strong communities,” said NAR President Dick Gaylord, a broker with RE/MAX Real Estate Specialists in Long Beach, Calif. “These five Good Neighbor Awards winners exemplify the compassion and commitment of thousands of other RealtorsÒ who volunteer in their communities and help so many others. I’m pleased to honor these exceptional professionals.”
Barry got involved in helping the homeless in 1984 when her pastor asked her to join the Inter-Faith Housing Alliance board. The board offered a rental assistance hotline, which Barry quickly realized wasn’t enough to help people in need. In response, Barry founded the Inter-Faith Hospitality Network, which provides shelter for families through a network of more than 20 local churches and synagogues.
“I originally tried to find support to build a homeless shelter, but I ran into roadblocks, so I had to think of an alternative,” said Barry.
Barry’s tenacity in establishing the hospitality network helped grow the Inter-Faith Housing Alliance into a full-service nonprofit that has helped more than 2,500 homeless people improve their lives through an array of services, including safe temporary places to stay, permanent housing, and job placement.
More than just a shelter, the I-FHA serves meals; drives people to job interviews; and provides budget counseling, parenting classes, life skills training, and other services geared toward helping them become self-sufficient. The housing is temporary, but if the family still needs assistance after a month, it can move to the next host congregation. We try to limit stays to 90 days, but we’ve had people for up to nine months,” said Barry. “Often, it was a single mother who didn’t have the skills to earn enough to support her family. But we’re not just giving them a handout. They need to have the drive to get their lives back on track.”
Wanting to do still more, in 1995 Barry single-handedly raised $1.4 million to buy an abandoned building and transform it into Hope Gardens, which consists of eight transitional, subsidized-rent apartments for families who’ve been helped by the I-FHA and are ready to make that next step. She has served as an unpaid executive director for Hope Gardens for eight years.
The desire to help the homeless was personal for Barry, who was virtually homeless with two children after leaving her husband. “I eventually became successful but it was an enormous struggle,” she said. Years later, during a business trip to New York, an encounter with a homeless person transformed Barry. “I was driving out of the Lincoln Tunnel, stopped at a light, and came face to face with an elderly homeless woman. I sped away, and the entire ride home the Lord spoke to me about how I should have helped.”
That’s when Barry made it her mission to do something in her own community and why she jumped at the chance to serve on the I-FHA’s board. Barry spent 10 years as its chair and continues to serve on the board as well as chair the fund development committee.
“Inter-Faith wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Lei Barry and her vision,” said Barbara Silbert, I-FHAs first paid executive director and now a volunteer for Hope Gardens. “When the times were tough, she carried on. She has a strong faith and if she runs into a roadblock, she just looks for another way to get it done.”
No one knows the miracle of I-FHA better than Beth Jenkins, who came to I-FHA eight years ago with her son, then two years old. “I had no family and nowhere to go. I was driving a car that was unlicensed, unregistered, and uninsured − I had nothing,” said Jenkins. “There’s a perception of a homeless person as the wino on the corner, but I grew up in a regular middle-class home. I had three years of college and a good job history. But I made some bad choices, was extremely depressed, and had a hard time functioning. Inter-Faith showed me that I was loved and valued.”
Jenkins now works at Hope Gardens as an administrative assistant and represents the type of success story that inspires Barry to keep working hard to help people get back on their feet. “As I think about the people who have gone through the program, it thrills me to know we gave them a chance,” said Barry.
Barry and the other four Good Neighbor Awards winners will each receive a $10,000 grant for their charity, a $2,000 Lowe’s gift card and be profiled in the November issue of REALTORÒ Magazine, www.realtor.org/realtormag. Winners also receive a crystal trophy and the right to use the Good Neighbor Awards logo on their Web site and in promotional materials. The recipients will be presented with their awards at the 2008 REALTORSÒ Conference & Expo in Orlando, Fla., in November; 25,000 RealtorsÒ and guests are expected to attend the conference.
“The 2008 REALTORÒ Magazine Good Neighbor Awards winners epitomize everything a volunteer should be – dedicated, generous, and passionate about their cause,” said NAR Vice President of Publications Pamela Geurds Kabati, REALTOR® Magazine’s editorial director. “We hope these RealtorsÒ inspire others around the country to give back to their communities.”
REALTORÒ Magazine’s Good Neighbor Awards is sponsored by eNeighborhoods, which has supported the program since its inception in 2000, as well as Homes.com, Lowe’s and LandAmerica. A contribution also was made by Phil McGinnis, McGinnis Commercial Real Estate, Dover, Del.
The Good Neighbor Awards have been awarded annually since 2000 and are presented by NAR’s REALTORÒMagazine. Nominees were judged on their personal contribution of time, as well as financial and material contributions to their cause. To be eligible, nominees had to be NAR members in good standing. More information about the Good Neighbor Awards winners is available at www.realtor.org/realtormag.
eNeighborhoods (www.eneighborhoods.com) has been an NAR REALTOR Benefits® Program partner offering unique marketing solutions to Realtors® since 2002. As the nation’s premier compiler of home and neighborhood information, this Dominion Enterprises company provides real estate professionals with a comprehensive set of marketing tools to deliver current and comprehensive information on local neighborhoods, demographics, schools and more.
Homes.com (www.homes.com),a division of Dominion Enterprises, is a leading provider of real estate marketing and media services, including brand advertising, property listing exposure, website development, search engine marketing and lead generation solutions. More than 4 million homebuyers visit Homes.com each month to search more than 1.8 million homes for sale, and to locate top local real estate professionals.
Lowe’s(www.lowes.com) has been working with customers to maintain and improve their homes for more than 60 years. Lowe’s is proud to help support the Good Neighbor Awards and similar community efforts through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity International and as underwriter for Habitat’s Women Build program. In 2006 and 2007 Lowe’s funded 52 Habitat builds nationwide. Lowe’s remains dedicated to educating future homeowners through Lowe’s Toolbox for Education program, which awarded $5 million in grants to nearly 1,000 public schools nationwide. Lowe’s and the National Association of Realtors® have partnered to bring Realtors® exclusive benefits to help build relationships with their customers, build referrals and build their client base. The benefits program is featured on www.LowesRealtorBenefits.com.
LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. (www.landam.com), based in Richmond, Va., is a leading provider of real estate transaction services with over 700 offices and a network of more than 8,500 active agents. LandAmerica serves agent, residential, commercial and lender customers throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and Asia. LandAmerica has been ranked Number One in the Mortgage Services Industry on FORTUNE ® magazine’s 2007 and 2008 lists of America’s Most Admired Companies.
The National Association of RealtorsÒ, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1.2 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
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Information about NAR is available at www.realtor.org. This and other news releases are posted in the Web site’s “News Media” section in the NAR Media Center.
