Edwina Benner Plaza has 66 homes – and we’d like you to meet a family from one of them: Phillip and Marjorie, who have spent more than thirty years living in the Bay Area. For a while his career in construction was enough to keep the couple in a home until work-related medical bills piled up for him. Before long Marjorie’s treatments for cancer and a serious car crash made that pile even higher – eventually forcing them onto the street where they lived for ten years.
Phillip and Marjorie were among the 3,500 applicants for the 66 homes at Edwina Benner Plaza and ended their ten years of homelessness by moving in February 2019. The two – along with their dog, Sasha – consider themselves very fortunate to experience some everyday and ordinary comforts like being able to take a shower anytime and cook a hot meal when they’re hungry.
“It is peace of mind and it is a joy to know I can take any part of our day and make it better if it starts to turn to the other side,” Marjorie told us. “Living here has really helped me feel better, and Phil and I are both understanding better about laughter, and it is so healing.”
Congratulations to MidPen, the City of Sunnyvale and others who worked on Edwina Benner Plaza and, most of all, welcome Phillip and Marjorie as well as the other 65 families who have found a home here!