In the ongoing push to address the number of unhoused residents in Memphis and Shelby County, a smaller subsect of the unhoused, profoundly deaf and hard-of-hearing people, face additional barriers in securing housing and employment.
Those barriers are at the heart of a team-up of two nonprofits Homes for Hearts and Bridges for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, with the former being a Memphis-centric nonprofit and the latter serving the Mid-South.
Homes for Hearts, led by CEO Zach Waters, has been in operation since 2020. Waters serves as the president, CEO, and sole employee — when he’s not working his other full-time job running online courses for cake and cookie artists with his fiancée.
The collaboration with Bridges was sparked by a man named Henry Comas.
Bridges reached out to Waters, excited by the Homes for Hearts mission and the ultimate goal of providing a pathway to homeownership. Bridges wanted to talk to Waters about Comas.
Comas was kicked out of his housing, which was barely affordable in the first place, because of his three dogs. Comas, who is deaf, relied on his three dogs as his “ears.”