A Nesting Place

🏠🤎 A Home, Not Just a House 🏡 🤎 Episode 24

There’s another side to our story that we haven’t talked about much.

For over a decade, I’ve dedicated my career to operating residential homes for women living with serious mental illness.

These homes are more than a passion project. They’re a small business, my full-time career, and how I support myself.

While my greatest concern is maintaining stability for the women who call these houses home, the potential loss of these properties also puts the future of the business I’ve spent years building at risk.

We’re working toward purchasing both properties so we can create long-term stability, not only for the residents, but for the future of A Nesting Place.

The biggest obstacle right now is securing the upfront capital needed to pursue ownership.

If you’d like to support our efforts, donations will go toward the property acquisition and related costs. Sharing our story is also an incredible way to help us reach more people.

📽️ New to our story? I’ve been documenting this journey from the beginning in my series, A Home, Not Just a House. You can follow along and catch up on all previous episodes on my personal page, Mandi Hensley

🏠 Support our fundraiser here:
https://gofund.me/f9fef268f

Thank you for supporting these homes, the women who live in them, and the small business behind it all. 🤎

~ Mandi

Episode 20 of A Home, Not Just a House 🏠🤎

I haven’t shared every episode of this series here on our business page, but today felt like an important one to share.

For anyone just finding this story: the two homes where I operate my residential-care business are currently for sale. My goal is to find a path to ownership so we can protect the stability these homes provide for the women who live here.

Today started with our monthly Family Care Home Forum, included a little Chick-fil-A and apparently a Martina McBride concert in my car 😂, and ended with the meeting I’ve really been waiting for.

I sat down with a banker to go through the options for purchasing these homes through my business.

And there’s one avenue I haven’t explored yet: SBA financing.

This is NOT an approval, and I definitely didn’t leave the meeting feeling like we’ve solved this. I still have financial documents to provide, the numbers have to work, and there are concerns about whether the business income will support the financing I need.

We even discussed what it could look like if I could only qualify to purchase one of the homes.

That’s not the goal.

The goal is still both 🏠🏠

But today wasn’t about getting a yes. It was about making sure I haven’t left a possible path unexplored.

Hopefully around Tuesday, I’ll have a better idea of whether this avenue could actually work.

Until then, I keep going.

I don’t have an answer yet. But I have another avenue. 🤎

If you’d like to help us work toward our path to ownership, you can donate or share our GoFundMe here:

https://gofund.me/f9fef268f

Every donation, share and person who follows this story helps us keep moving forward. 🏠🤎

Episode 20 • A Home, Not Just a House

Before this was somebody’s home, it was an empty house I stood in crying🏠🤎

I started working toward this business in 2015. In January 2016, we welcomed our first resident, but getting there wasn’t nearly as simple as that sentence makes it sound.

There was a point when I genuinely wondered if any of this was going to work.

More than a decade later, I’m facing another one of those moments.

This time, the houses are established homes. Women live here. And I’m trying to find a path to ownership so I can protect what we’ve built.

I still don’t know exactly how this chapter ends.

But I know something now that I didn’t know standing in that empty house in 2015:

I’ve figured out hard things before.

And I’m going to keep trying 🤎

Day 16 of A Home, Not Just a House.

🏠 Fundraiser linked in bio

When you’re on call 24/7, you learn to take the quiet moments when you get them. 🤎

If you also follow Mandi K personally, you probably know there’s another side of her content that includes plenty of makeup, skincare and self-care 😂🤎

Today, Day 15 of A Home, Not Just a House looks a little different.

Running residential homes means there really isn’t a true “day off.” Even on a quiet day, the homes still need to be checked on and the phone can ring at any moment.

But when things ARE calm, sometimes you have to take advantage of those moments.

Because you can’t burn yourself out trying to save something you hope to still be running years from now 🏠

We all deserve a little self-care sometimes 🤎

The homes are still for sale. The fundraiser is still growing. And the fight for our path to ownership continues.

Day 15 of A Home, Not Just a House 🏠🤎

If you’d like to support our journey, you can donate or share our GoFundMe:

https://gofund.me/f9fef268f

Every donation and every share gets us a little closer 🤎

The Ohio Department of Behavioral Health has approved our residential facility renewal application 👏🏻👏🏻 We are excited to continue doing what we do!