About:

The Metrowest IHN is a cooperative, interfaith partnership offering hope to homeless families with children through safe transitional shelter, meals, and supportive case management as they seek permanent housing.

Where The Families Stay

Network Congregations

FPM’s seventeen Host Congregations provide overnight accommodations for families by converting their classrooms into bedrooms, one week at a time, three to four times a year. Each Host Congregation is paired with one or two of the twenty-three Support Congregations who provide additional volunteers, supplies and support during host weeks.

Family Promise is able to provide shelter to four families, up to fourteen people, at any given time. Families arrive at the scheduled Host Congregation around 5:30 each evening. Here they are welcomed by Family Promise volunteers, provided a hot nutritious meal, a safe warm bedroom, support and fellowship. Guest families and volunteer hosts come together for the evening meal around 6:00pm. After dinner and clean up, families are able to relax and unwind a bit. Volunteers may assist a guest child with homework, read a book, or play a game with them.

Families arise early in the morning, are provided breakfast by the volunteers return to the Day Center to begin their day.

Day Center

The Common Street Community Church in Natick donates the space for FPM’s Day Center that serves as their families’ home base. It is available to their families 365 days a year from 7:00am to 5:00pm. Here, families shower and prepare for the day. During the week, school age children catch their school bus, young children are taken to daycare and parents either head to work, school or continue their job search.  On the weekends, families may choose to spend their time at “home” at the day center, catching up on laundry, doing homework and preparing for the week ahead.

In addition to the regular daily activities that we all experience, parents in the program work closely with their FPM case manager to address the issues that led to their homelessness, to set goals necessary to help them regain sustainable, independent housing, and to connect them to Family Promise and community resources. Each family’s needs and goals are different. For some, it may be working with an FPM volunteer to study for their GED or connecting with the local career center for assistance with resume writing and interview skills. For others who are already employed, it may be working with their case manager to budget their income, pay down debt and save for an apartment.  Whatever their goal may be, parents are working hard to take care of their families’ ongoing needs while working towards independent living. As one guest said, “Life still goes on, we just don’t have a place to call home.”

 Two Families

 Mary and her two young children arrived at FPM 3 months ago. In that short time, Mary has received her GED, enrolled in school fulltime to become a medical assistant and found part time employment.  Mary’s children are doing well in school and Mary continues to work hard on budgeting, debt reduction and saving for an apartment.

Tyreese and Kelly arrived at FPM with their 1 year old son. Neither parent had their GED and had been having difficulty finding employment. Within 4 months, both Tyreese and Kelly received their GEDs and Tyreese found work in a local restaurant where he received on the job training to become a prep cook with the hopes of moving up to a line cook. They were able to save up and move into their own apartment within 5 months of entering the program.

The Need

Family homelessness is on the rise in Massachusetts and across the country. According to the Mass Coalition for the Homeless, the average age of a homeless person in Massachusetts is 8 years old. That’s a 3^rd grader! In order for these children to grow into healthy, educated, self-sufficient adults, they need to have a safe and stable home to grow up in. By helping their parents receive the education and job and life skill training they need to provide a safe and stable home, Family Promise Metrowest is helping to ensure that each child has the opportunity to become a healthy, educated, self-sufficient adult.

How Support Can Help

Support will enable Family Promise Metrowest to provide ongoing case management services, transportation to and from work, school, and medical appointments, childcare and shelter to families who are homeless. They welcome support through the donation of your time as a volunteer, donation of items needed for our families and financial support. To learn more how you can help, please visit their website at www.familypromisemetrowest.org.

About:

For 25 years, Father Bill’s & MainSpring has led innovations to end, not just manage, homelessness, with programs that shelter and re-connect people to housing, jobs and services.  Last year, they helped 4,000 households (families, individuals, veterans, elders, students, the working poor, and women fleeing domestic violence) access safe shelter, receive a meal, get medical help, gain housing, find jobs, remain in their homes, or move beyond homelessness.

Their two individual adult shelters, Father Bill’s Place, Quincy and MainSpring House, Brockton, shelter 2,000+ men and women annually.  These are the only year-round, low-threshold shelters for homeless individuals in the South Shore, Southeastern Massachusetts region. No one is turned away, unless there is a safety issue. Rising demand, however, is overwhelming their capacity.  Public funding barely covers the basics of shelter and they have been level-funded for years.  In fact, 54% of their beds must be privately funded.  They are challenged to meet the basic emergency shelter and food needs of those in the community who are struggling with homelessness, poverty and food insecurity.

Father Bill’s & MainSpring welcomes your generous support, especially this winter season. When cold weather strikes, our doors open wide for those in need — providing the most vulnerable with safe shelter, warm meals, caring staff and hope for a brighter future.

 Emergency Shelter: They shelter 225+ men and women each night at their adult shelters. Winter brings more people inside, meaning many guests must sleep on cots or blankets.  Today, Father Bill’s Place, Quincy, is experiencing extreme overcrowding.  Each night, the must transport guests from Quincy to their other adult shelter, MainSpring House, in Brockton, which is a larger facility. What began as a short-term response on cold nights is, unfortunately, now a part of our everyday operations.

How your support can help:

Your support will make sure each person has a safe place to stay, receives nutritious meals, and engages with Triage Staff to access individualized services to help them move on.  Your support will also help purchase critical personal items for guests that are now in extremely short supply, including: towels, washcloths, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and deodorant.  They also welcome donations of new coats, gloves, scarves and warm socks.

“I have to say that I hit rock bottom.  I was homeless and unemployed for over a year.  I was sleeping outdoors and eating out of dumpsters and trashcans.  My Triage Worker saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself…They inspired me and I worked my heart out for them.  I started going to classes on computers, resume writing and classes for starting a small business and got a full time job.” 

Shelter Guest

Emergency Food — The Table: Many in the community must choose between buying food for their families and paying rent. Father Bill’s & MainSpring is ensuring that our neighbors do not go hungry. The Table, the community lunch program at MainSpring House in Brockton, serves 130+ free lunches a day, six days a week (47,748 meals last year), to neighbors in need. Each guest is seated at a round table for easy conversation, and is individually served. Volunteers, staff and guests get to know one another over a hot meal, served with dignity and respect.

How your support can help:

 Your support will help  purchase food and supplies so that each person who comes to the door receives a healthy meal. For many, this may be their only meal that day.

 “We get to know these people; they become like ‘our kids’.  You worry when they don’t show up.  We know who is living in a tent and who isn’t.  You especially worry about them on the days it snows. We look for them, and give them sandwiches to take out. We see generations…grandfathers, fathers, sons. We now have two child booster seats, and sometimes even that’s not enough. I feel that The Table is saving a lot of people that live on the margins from really going under.  “

-Volunteer Coordinator, The Table

The Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance (MHSA) is a nonprofit advocacy organization with the singular mission of ending homelessness in the Commonwealth. Through strategic partnerships formed with government, private philanthropy, business leaders, homeless individuals, and service providers, MHSA develops and implements innovative housing solutions to homelessness.

The Need

Homelessness is a housing crisis that affects thousands of poor working people and those with disabilities, mental illness and addiction who cannot afford a place to live. As a result, the moral, social and financial costs of this crisis have soared as people rely on expensive emergency room and hospital visits, the correctional system, and the streets.

MHSA is leading the way in transforming how Massachusetts addresses homelessness. For many years, the Commonwealth has responded to homelessness primarily through shelters and other emergency resources. Through innovative initiatives like Home & Healthy for Good (HHG), MHSA has demonstrated that providing housing and services to chronically homeless individuals through a low-threshold housing model is less costly and more effective than managing their homelessness and health problems on the street or in shelter.

Permanent supportive housing has significant implications when it comes to the emergency shelter system’s ability to respond to the increased demand for shelter during the cold winter months. By housing those chronically homeless individuals who have stayed in shelters for years, permanent supportive housing initiatives like HHG free up shelter beds and other emergency resources for those who are experiencing an immediate housing crisis during the winter. Permanent supportive housing is a critical component of the shift toward responses that end, rather than merely manage, the homelessness of our most vulnerable neighbors.

How Your Support Can Help

Nettie, a 74-year-old formerly homeless Boston resident, spent 15 years staying at one of Boston’s largest homeless shelters. In 2007, Nettie entered into MHSA’s Home & Healthy for Good program. “This connection to health care has literally saved her life,” said Sue Smith, her case manager at MHSA member agency Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership.

Sue and her doctors have helped Nettie stay on a diet that is managing her congestive heart disease and hypertension. Last year, Nettie was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer at a routine check-up — an appointment she would not have had if she was still homeless. Thanks to a year of chemotherapy and radiation, five days a week, she is finally in remission. “I’ve been through it all,” said Nettie. “But I feel great. And I’m 74 years old!”

Your support enables MHSA and its partners to provide individuals like Nettie with stable housing and support services that strengthen their connections to health care and other critical resources.

For more information, please contact:

Caitlin Golden
Director of Public Relations & Community Engagement
Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance
P.O. Box 120070, Boston, MA 02112
617.367.6447 ext. 28
Email: cgolden@mhsa.net
Web: www.mhsa.net