Our History

2000 | Founding

Plymouth Healing Communities was founded in 2000 to address the chronic and devastating problem of people exiting psychiatric hospitalization into homelessness.  The vision was to create a home where people with mental illness could live alongside community volunteers, called companions, who would share in their journey towards healing, hope and stability and to create community knowledge about and compassion for people living with mental illness. 

2001 | House of Healing Opens

House of Healing is an emergency respite program for people exiting out of in-patient psychiatric treatment after a mental health crisis. Eight people live in the home at any given time – five residents and three live-in companions. Residents stay from 6 months to a year as they transition to more permanent housing. Unlike many community shelters, House of Healing offers a home with individual rooms, home cooked meals, a garden, social outings, and a built-in community.

2003 | The Search For Permanent Supportive Housing Begins

Beginning in 2003, Plymouth Healing Communities began to acquire properties to ensure that residents leaving House of Healing would have options for permanent housing and sustained companionship.  The organization’s first purchase was a five bedroom house where residents could live in a communal setting on a permanent basis while receiving supportive services. Through the years we have added more units in shared communal settings, such as large single family homes, and small-scale apartment complexes. Because our residents and tenants are all low-income and living with a chronic and disabling mental health condition, the units are subsidized through vouchers or HUD funding to ensure they have an affordable option for permanent and supportive housing. 

Current properties, listed in the order in which they were acquired, now provide 44 units of permanent housing to individuals and families who are coping with mental illness and who were previously homeless or in unstable housing:

2004 - Hofmann House

2008 - Argonaut Apartments

2009 - Admiral House

2014 - Argonaut 2

2019 - Eng House

Eng House, our latest project, is located right next door to House of Healing and underwent a full renovation after it was acquired in 2019. Eng House safely opened in June 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and two residents from House of Healing were the first to move in!

2011 | Community Companion Program Debuts

As the number of House of Healing alumni grew and moved into other housing in Seattle, we stayed connected to them through a new role: Community Companion. This is a person who partners with new and current residents and helps them access the broader support community. The Community Companionship Program was designed to provide companionship support to House of Healing alumni and residents of our other properties through both one-on-one and group experiences. The program's positive support is an antidote to the pernicious isolation many residents face, and this contributes in meaningful ways to keeping tenants in their housing long-term. 

2016 | Grace Apartments

When Welcome Table Christian Fellowship relocated to the Beacon Hill area in Seattle, they built three beautiful units of affordable housing. Grace Apartments is situated next to the new sanctuary and Plymouth Healing Communities provides property management oversight and an opportunity for the Grace residents to connect with Community Companion Volunteers for one-on-one and group companionship.