Summer Street House opens for developmentally disabled women

Bright, sunny door to welcome residents home.

Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson greets one of the residents.

Gazette intern reporter

A new home for developmentally disabled adults was open for preview last weekend in Pullman. The Summer Street House will be for women with developmental disabilities where they live with “assisted natural living.”

“Our goal is to support these women with everything you would do in daily life,” said Lorraine Fulfs, co-founder of LMK, Inc. “Our staff will step up and follow-up with help if the residents need it with anything from cutting vegetables to helping cook dinner.”

The need for a home like Summer Street was addressed by the nine members of the developmental service board, composed of Whitman County community members and parents of children with special needs who are appointed by county commissioners. The board meets monthly to discuss the issues and needs of the community with county commissioners.

About five years ago, the need for more disabled housing for clients was brought up, and Tim Myers, developmental services coordinator, helped form a sub-committee through the developmental service board to find locations of properties that could be used to build and house the developmentally disabled.

Two properties owned by the county were turned over to the Community Action Center and Dale Miller, CAC housing and development manager, on the agreement that the money from one property would be ­­­used to fund the building of a home on t­he other property.

The Summer Street House is the first of its kind, because prior to the construction of it, women with special needs primarily were renting homes in and around Pullman and had to work around issues of accessibility.

“The Steptoe House in Pullman is the result of turning property over to the CAC and money from the Housing Trust Fund grant. The Grady House in Colfax, due to age and amount of remodeling, was unable to be used at the time because it did not meet the needs of the clients,” said Myers.

The next concern of the DSB was the fact that there was inadequate as well as non-existent housing for women, forcing them to move around Pullman, rental-to-rental.

“We knew we had to do something and it needed to be addressed,” said Myers.

So money from the Housing Trust Fund grant was used to fund the Summer Street House.

“We just started working more closely with the CAC, who has done a fantastic job,” said Myers.

Miller managed and designed the Summer Street House as well as the Steptoe House in Pullman, along with packaging finance plans for the projects.

“We worked closely with advocates for developmentally disabled and the Developmental Services Board to be able to provide four quality apartments in Pullman and Colfax for people,” said Miller.

Miller began the process for writing the Housing Trust Fund grant back in 2013, and received approval in 2014. The first part of the project started in the spring 2015, and once that house was completed, work began on the Summer Street House in fall 2015, which was completed in May 2016.