Good Laundry: Low-Cost Laundromat

Good Church | Flint, MI
Initiative: Renovations & Supplies for Laundromat Ministry
2023 Grant: $50,000

Eliminating Hygiene Poverty by Bringing Laundry to Church

In a three-square-mile area around Good Church, many households live on less than $15,000 of annual income and struggle with hygiene poverty, a type of poverty in which people cannot afford hygiene essentials, such as shampoo, soap, hairbrushes, and laundry detergent. In the community surrounding Good Church, nearly 4,000 residents don’t have access to affordable laundry services—and Pastor Leo Robinson II and his wife Miosha have seen firsthand how hygiene poverty hurts local families.

“At one of our Thursday-night teen services a couple years ago, we had a young man in attendance who asked if, on the ride home, we could make a stop somewhere,” says Miosha. “We found out that he wanted to stop at a friend’s house to borrow some clothes—because he didn’t have anything clean to wear to school the next day. We realized how easy it is to take things like a washer and dryer for granted.”

After doing more research about hygiene poverty, leaders at Good Church discovered that 74% of families who cannot afford household necessities skip washing dishes or doing laundry. A lack of clean clothes makes it difficult for people to maintain jobs and send their kids to school—but when a family has access to laundry facilities, parents are more likely to achieve steady employment and reduce their children’s absenteeism.

An Innovative Solution

The team at Good Church wanted to show Jesus to their neighbors by meeting people in the community where their needs were most evident—so they formed a plan to launch Good Laundry, a low-cost laundromat in the lower level of their facility.

With $50,000 from the Kingdom Advancing Grant, Good Church was able to help fund the renovation, which includes eight industrial-sized washers and dryers, a family lounge, a computer lab, and more.

At Good Laundry, local families will be able to access affordable laundry services—but the mission doesn’t stop with the clothes. Visitors will also get to build relationships with volunteers as they wait on their laundry to finish. Volunteers will be present in the lounge area to help fold clothes, oversee the computer lab, and share the hope of Christ as they engage with laundromat visitors.

“When we were doing research for Good Laundry, we visited a few laundromats,” says Miosha. “And we could see right away: The need was not just laundry. We saw the single mom with four kids who was trying to get her laundry done, the woman who didn’t have enough money on her card, the young man disconnected and disengaged from everyone else. In those environments, you see that the need goes beyond the clean clothes.”

The Future of Good Laundry

One of the most significant ways Good Laundry will impact the community is in its local school systems. Many students in the Flint area miss school due to a lack of clean clothes. There are three school districts within the three-mile radius of Good Laundry’s service area, and part of the vision for the initiative is to see school attendance improve as a result of the new, affordable laundromat.

As parents come to Good Laundry, many with their children in tow, volunteers at the laundromat will be there to help provide tutoring if students need help with schoolwork, provide support if people need help with resumes in the computer lab, and more.

“We’re launching this program because a real God showed us real love in real ways—and we want to show that same love to the people in our community,” says Pastor Leo. “You cannot turn away God’s love if someone is showing it to you in a real way. Good Laundry is about more than just the clothes. We care about real jobs, real educations. We want to be genuine and authentic.”

Good Laundry starts with meeting the felt needs of the community by offering an affordable way to do laundry. But as it grows in popularity and draws in members of the community, it will become an avenue to introducing the people of Flint to God’s love in tangible, practical ways.

www.goodchurch.life/goodlaundry