The Friends Program, Inc

Friends Program Emergency Housing has provided a 24-hour, 7 days a week shelter for families since 1980. The program provides intensive, community-based case management and short-term housing, aftercare and outreach services for families at risk of future homelessness. Families are provided with critical, temporary emergency housing, as well as support, education, training and skills that help position them to secure and maintain long-term and stable housing for themselves.

Emergency Housing staff also provide ongoing continuum-of-care for families that have exited the program, greatly increasing the longevity of each family's independence and success. A safe, consistent, predictable, and respectful environment that keeps families together as a unit, sets the stage for success at achieving individualized goals.

The renovation will not only increase our capacity to house families but will increase our efficiency and effectiveness to provide responsive, trauma-informed care. Trauma-informed care involves creating spaces that emphasize safety, security, understanding, strength, and the opportunity to rebuild control in their lives through in-house case management that addresses short-term individual needs including income, education, and employment as well as long-term needs related to trauma history, mental and physical health, and emotional challenges.

In addition to more space, the renovation will include design elements like re-programmable locks, privacy screens, adequate and independent storage, and more opportunities for personalization of rooms—which is especially important for children in the shelter. Office spaces will be redesigned with an appropriate layout that provides sufficient space for family intakes and case management meetings with both parents and children in the room.

These physical changes will reflect the shelter’s robust programming, which provides families with strengths-based skill building activities, resolving unmet medical and mental health needs, substance abuse recovery, budgeting, interview and resume skills, removing barriers to future housing, positive parenting classes, nutrition classes, and more.

The Friends Program Emergency Housing family shelter is not a long-term housing solution, but the closer to “home” that a temporary room can feel, the easier it is for families, especially children, to settle in and begin the process of rebuilding their lives.

Help us help our most vulnerable families. Donate to the Home Stretch today!