Artist is grateful to have a place to call home

Brandy Hatfield keeps finding signs that she is headed in the right direction.

She is one of 14 women transitioning out of homelessness with the support of Jubilee Women's Center, a 25- year-old non-profit that provides stable housing to clean and sober women for $250 a month in rent.

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	In her drawing titled "Old Women," artist Brandy Hatfield depicted subjects coming "out of the darkness and into the light." With the help of Jubilee Women's Center, that's the journey Hatfield is taking for herself.

Hatfield is 48, a survivor of more than a few hard knocks -- abusive relationships, alcoholism, two house fires, deafness, depression, an estranged family and a daughter lost to an adoption gone awry.

She is someone who lived on the edge for a long time, aware of the abyss even when she was safe and warm and running a dog day care business in Edmonds.

Perhaps that is why she has meditated since 1994 on what owning her own home would feel like.

"In my mind, I can walk through all of its rooms," Hatfield said, sitting back and closing her blue eyes. She knows it exists: Not too long ago, she was leafing through a magazine and found her exact floor plan, called "The Snohomish."

That was a sign.

An artist by preference, Hatfield has worked a lot of jobs, like her housemates at Jubilee, who all work to make their rent.

"These are the working poor," Jubilee Executive Director Susan Fox said Thursday. Community members donated turkey dinners for Thanksgiving, a treat for the women, who usually stock their own refrigerators while living in the two houses leased by Jubilee.

They are the homeless seen but not recognized: working in discount department stores, waiting tables, stocking shelves. Nationwide, nearly a quarter of the homeless population has reported income from paid work in the past month, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Jubilee's role is close to Fox's heart; she said she is a recovering alcoholic, sober for 21 years, who once lost her home escaping a violent relationship with a drug-addicted drinker.

At Jubilee, where the average age is 45, more than 60 percent of the women they serve have been abused, Fox said.

"To be able to open the door to them and say, 'You are not bad,' " is one of her life's greatest rewards, she said. "You can't imagine the shame, the stigma, they have brought with them."

Hatfield lives in a Capitol Hill neighborhood. Last year's one-night count of King County's homeless found more than 3,300 homeless people living in transitional housing programs, like her. Nearly 2,200 people were without shelter of any kind, and nearly 2,400 more were in emergency shelters.

Hatfield is preparing to strike out on her own, using the sign language she is learning at Jubilee.

Her ability to read lips has been "filling in the gaps" since before she was diagnosed with deafness at the age of 16.

But the aural world can overwhelm her delicate balance. Attending meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon, when many people might be piping up at the same time, is like being surrounded by "a bunch of noise and magpies."

Luckily, she can attend meetings online and chat with an Internet support group. She has been sober for 18 years, a fact for which she is grateful every day.

But she has been tested since she became homeless.

In 2005, she left an unhappy relationship in Edmonds and went to a friend's house in Dallas, where she had spent most of her life before moving to Washington in 1998.

When she went to Texas, Hatfield left behind her work at the "Bark-A-Lounge & Doggie Daycare" business, which, if not profitable, was much loved, she said.

"In retrospect, I jumped too far," she said. "I was in so much emotional pain that I didn't see that I should have stayed closer. When I realized, I thought to myself, 'Oh, my God. What have I done?' "

The Texas sanctuary turned sour; her friend, she said, was "an active drunk," and a mean one at that.

So she hopped a bus back to Lynnwood, and with the encouragement of an Everett Christian organization that provided her with food and shelter, she tried to connect to faith.

"I was praying for relief," Hatfield said. "I had been trying so hard, working, staying sober, leaving unhealthy relationships. ..."

Relief arrived.

Someone recommended Jubilee, whose rent she pays with disability checks and proceeds from her art sales through her online portraiture business at designergrl.com.

Fox hopes to buy the house Hatfield is living in, which some donors bought and renovated to lease to Jubilee.

If all goes well, 27 women will be able to find shelter for up to two years with Jubilee, as long as they've been clean and sober for six months.

Friday is Hatfield's one-year-anniversary at Jubilee. On Thanksgiving, she was grateful for her sobriety, and for Jubilee.

"No matter how tumultuous it gets, I know life can be good," Hatfield said. "It all depends on how you look at it."

TO HELP

Jubilee Women's Center is $100,000 shy of the end of a $5 million capital campaign to renovate the former Capitol Hill convent that serves

as its main transitional facility for homeless women.

Executive Director Susan Fox also wants to raise $750,000 to buy the home where Brandy Hatfield and six others reside. To donate money, contact Fox at 206-325-2163 or susanfox@jwcenter.org. To learn more about the center, go to jwcenter.org.