In Angola he managed a bakery and owned a house. In Tacoma he works shifts at the airport and his family of four lives in one room. "My house was much bigger," he told me. "But here, it is much more secure." The first in a series on what home means now.

Thrive Center Tacoma opened in September 2024 on a stretch of South Hosmer Street that most people in Tacoma knew for the wrong reasons. Two years later, site director Anna Bondarenko is the emergency contact for 150 children, half the parking lot is a soccer field, and the fire department shows up in three minutes. "It's only been two years," she says. "But it seems like we've lived a lifetime." Anna talks about what it took to build a village, why the kids don't translate for their parents, and what she wants people to understand about the families who call it home.