Family Promise keeps families in homes together
When a family experiences homelessness for the first time, shelters can be frightening. Family Promise Salt Lake offers an alternative. The program offers to house families in churches, provide transitional housing and to get the family back into their own living space.
“It’s more cost effective to keep them in their house,” says Jennifer Hare, executive director.
When families first come to Family Promise Salt Lake, the organization makes sure that the family meets established criteria and then gets them into the program. Churches open their doors and create an inviting atmosphere for families to come and stay for a week.
The biggest advantage is that the family unit gets to stay together. Whether it is a mother, father, teenager and infant or a grandmother, a mother and a daughter or any other family unit, that family will not be split up. In some shelters, the teenage boy may be separated from the mother and have to stay with the single men in a different part of the shelter.
During the family’s stay, volunteers from the church make and eat dinner with them.
“Human contact is important,” says Tony Milner, program director.
Typical the family stays in a church house for a week and is moved to another church house after a week.
Housing families in the church exposes members of that church to the realities of poverty in their own community. Hare says that it allows people of faith to put their faith into practice.
Family Promise Salt Lake is an interfaith, non-proselytizing, non-profit organization.
This article was originally published at examiner.com.
“It’s more cost effective to keep them in their house,” says Jennifer Hare, executive director.
When families first come to Family Promise Salt Lake, the organization makes sure that the family meets established criteria and then gets them into the program. Churches open their doors and create an inviting atmosphere for families to come and stay for a week.
The biggest advantage is that the family unit gets to stay together. Whether it is a mother, father, teenager and infant or a grandmother, a mother and a daughter or any other family unit, that family will not be split up. In some shelters, the teenage boy may be separated from the mother and have to stay with the single men in a different part of the shelter.
During the family’s stay, volunteers from the church make and eat dinner with them.
“Human contact is important,” says Tony Milner, program director.
Typical the family stays in a church house for a week and is moved to another church house after a week.
Housing families in the church exposes members of that church to the realities of poverty in their own community. Hare says that it allows people of faith to put their faith into practice.
Family Promise Salt Lake is an interfaith, non-proselytizing, non-profit organization.
This article was originally published at examiner.com.