By Kirby Warner
The W.D. Benson House is one of Lubbock’s oldest structures, but it still has life as the Hope House, used by the organization Family Promise of Lubbock.
According to the Lubbock Heritage Society website, the W.D. Benson House was originally built in 1909 for lawyer W.D. Benson and his family.
Kirby Warner/The Hub@TTU
It was relocated from the 1300 block of Avenue K to 2406 9th St. in the 1930s to become an apartment complex before it was donated to Family Promise, then known as the Lubbock Interfaith Hospitality Network. In 2005, the house was relocated close to the original location, according to the website.
Sally Abbe, the director of GIS and data services for the City of Lubbock, said there are three levels when it comes to designating a building as a historic landmark, national, state and local, with the this house falling under local.
The designation is added to the building’s zoning, which in the W.D. Benson House’s case would be as a Single Family Residential Design Historic (R1DH), Abbe said. Because it is a historical structure, the owners have to maintain a certain amount of creation-period accuracy.
“If it’s to be changed or torn down or anything, it has to come back to the Urban Design and Historic Preservation Commission,” Abbe said.
The most important aspect of historical preservation is knowing our history, Abbe said, and having things to illustrate that is important as well.
Mary Crites, an architect, said she was asked by her church to help Family Promise with renovating the W.D. Benson House through her previous firm.
Crites said the house was Folk Victorian style and was unusual for Lubbock in that it had shingle siding on its roof.
“It’s a very nice building in terms of its architecture,” Crites said. “Somewhat isolated in its surroundings now, but Family Promise, it was great that they could use the building.”
According to the Family Promise website, the mission of the organization is to be able to give homeless families with children tools for achieving long term, personal and parental self-sufficiency with temporary housing, supporting services and case management.
Doug Morris, the executive director of Lubbock Promise, said working with homeless families that have children makes the organization unique, and their goal is to help the families break their cycle of homelessness.
“There’s lots of organizations that will give them water and blankets and food and all that, but what we want to do is give them the tools, or expose them to the tools they need to lift themselves up out of being homeless,” Morris said.
These tools are tailored to each family that stays, Morris said, with examples including assistance with job searching, child care, workshops for budgeting, parenting skills and healthy eating.
According to the 2016 annual report for Family Promise, the organization managed to serve 66 homeless individuals and 17 families, with 13 families managing to secure permanent housing. The average length of stay in the house is 80 days.
Morris said it is great to be able to have the W.D. Benson House as a facility due to its large rooms. People are able to use it as a day center for activities such as doing laundry, using the computer and kitchen facilities and let their kids play in the playroom, Morris said.
The greatest quality of the house is in serving as a home that can instill hope and belief within families, Morris said.
“Every child should have a place to call home,” Morris said. “No child should be sleeping in a car somewhere, and that’s what we try to do, we try to provide them with a temporary home at first and then a permanent home.”
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