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To Sister Stella Neill, home is everything, and she is helping homeless families in Greater Des Moines find their own.

“The more we can help people create that space, the better the community is,” said Neill, who has been the executive director of Anawim Housing since its inception.

Neill, along with four community leaders, saw a need in Greater Des Moines in the late 1980s.

The area did not have a family shelter, but rather than building a shelter, the group wanted to give families a more stable alternative, a permanent residence. With around $5,000 from a local church, the group started Anawim in 1988, with one duplex.

Now, Anawim offers 212 permanent rental units to families.

Anawim is a nonprofit organization with a mission “to provide safe, affordable housing which assists in the stabilization of low-income families and the revitalization of the Des Moines metropolitan neighborhoods.”

The organization has two programs, one that develops the housing units and another, called Shelter Plus Care, that provides rental subsidies, supportive assistance and coordination with social services for homeless families and individuals with severe mental illness, chronic substance abuse or HIV/AIDS.

For the development aspect, Anawim takes vacant lots or buildings, restores or builds new units and rather than selling them for profit, generates additional housing. Most recently Anawim finished Pioneer Woods, with 66 units, in December 2007. It is now fully occupied.

For Anawim’s next project, the organization will be working with Hubbell Homes to build nine homes in nine days in 2009.

“It will be like “Extreme Home Make-over,” but without all the TV cameras,” said Hubbell spokesman Jarad Bernstein.

The houses will be single-family homes, east of the Drake neighborhood, near the intersection of Forest Avenue and 21st Street. The homes will be built “free and clear of debt,” Neill said.

Anawim not only helps families in the area, but also revitalizes sections of Greater Des Moines neighborhoods, such as renovating the first-ever apartment building in Des Moines at 1245 Sixth Ave., which is on the National Register of Historic Places.