Photo via Safer Futures

Bezos fund gives $5 million to fight homelessness in Portage County

In November 2024, Mark Frisone, executive director of Axess Family Services, felt his hands trembling as he read the email from the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund. Axess Family Services was about to receive $5 million.

“I thought it was a scam. I didn’t believe it. I dismissed the thing. How could that be real? It actually took them a string of emails to get me to respond,” he said.

Then in January, the money landed in the organization’s account.

Behind the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund are multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos and his fiance Lauren Sanchez, a former news anchor.

Their fund gives annual leadership awards to organizations and civic groups working to help families experiencing homelessness regain safe, stable housing. Since 2018, the Day 1 Fund has issued 248 awards totalling $750 million to organizations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Why Axess Family Services was chosen is anyone’s guess, but Frisone thinks it may be because of the agency’s long history of providing a broad-based continuum of services to various unhoused populations. (Axess Family Services was created on Jan. 1, 2024 to reflect the merger of Family & Community Services of Portage County and AxessPointe Community Health Centers.)

Organizations can’t apply for the funds and can’t even communicate with the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund, whose subject matter experts scour the country to identify potential recipients, Frisone said.

“They go out and select organizations around the nation who are doing exemplary work in the area of homelessness,” Frisone said. “It’s not a grant. It’s not an award. They make that very clear. It’s a reward for work that an organization has done in their respective community.”

Having received the funds, the organizations don’t have to submit expenditure reports, Frisone said. The Day 1 Fund trusts that the organization’s prior work ensures future fiscal responsibility.

“We operate homeless shelters and domestic violence shelters in several counties, and veterans shelters in almost every Northeast Ohio county. We also operate permanent supportive housing and other homeless outreach services. We’ve been doing this very well for a long time,” he said.

Axess Family Services was one of 13 recipients of $5 million nationwide in 2024, and the only one in Ohio. Rounding out smaller awards were 27 organizations, none of which were in Ohio.

How to spend the funds is already under discussion. Topping Frisone’s list is building a new facility for Portage County’s only domestic violence shelter. Safer Futures, as the shelter is called, was built 25 years ago to accommodate about five moms and their children. It’s always full.

“Times change and the world evolves,” he said. “We found that certainly it’s not big enough. We refer out too many women and children who are victims of domestic violence. We find a place for them to go, typically in another shelter in another county.”

A new Safer Futures, double the size, would allow Portage County to take care of its own residents. (It’s unclear if this would be a second building or a replacement.)

At the helm of an agency that has homeless programs and facilities in Portage, Summit, Stark, Mahoning, Geauga and Trumbull counties, Frisone said he’s been working the phones since the reward money came in.

“I’m the most popular guy in Northeast Ohio these days,” he joked. “I’ve had a lot of counties reach out to me. They want to partner with us to expand their services to the homeless. It’s a wonderful situation for us to be in.”

Zeroing in on the word ‘partner,’ Frisone explained that his goal isn’t simply to spend the $5 million until it’s gone. He recalled speaking with a former Day 1 Families Fund recipient in the Cincinnati area. They’d gotten their money a few years ago and had already spent it. The programs they’d created had to be closed down because the money was gone.

“We want people’s buy-in in these projects. We want communities to have some skin in the game. I’d like to turn that $5 million into $10 million or $15 million and serve a lot more people across a broader geographic spectrum,” he said.

That could mean establishing permanent supportive housing in Summit and Stark counties or funding homeless outreach efforts in the Mahoning Valley. Communities who have already committed significant resources to a project, but need a half million or so to get it across the finish line, would be desirable partners, he said.

“They all understand what’s at stake, and they all recognize that we’ll never see, nobody will ever see this money again in the near future, if ever,” he said. “So you’ve got to be kind of smart about it. This is one of those things that you’re blessed with once in a lifetime, and you dare not be irresponsible with it.”

Frisone said he’s already heard from Summit County’s Continuum of Care for the Homeless, which has pledges of funds for a project aimed at quickly rehousing homeless individuals and families.

Paraphrasing  the New Testament parable of loaves and fishes, Frisone said he’s interested in bringing people with their own resources to the table. Those partnerships translate to sustainable projects and programs he sets as his goal.

“This is not small potatoes,” he said. “Five million dollars is one hell of an award for any community, let alone for any organization, let alone for one based in Portage County. We’ve never had that kind of an award to this community, ever. It’s never happened before, and I doubt we’ll ever see it again, or anybody will ever see it again. It’s just one of those things that’s one in a million.”

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Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.