A NOTE ABOUT YEAR-END GIVING
This is the time of year that I write to share with you success stories and good news; and I’m still going to do that. However, I also need to make you aware of some significant altering challenges that our agency is facing.
As you know, these past five years we have survived a global pandemic, an unprecedented hurricane, and a dramatic rise in inflation. Now we are faced with massive government funding cuts and policy shifts. As you may or may not know, facing challenges is nothing new to me; I’ve been doing it my entire life. What I have learned is that hope opens our eyes to what could be, and faith gives us the strength to see it through.
Those experiences have served me well and continue to guide this work, walking beside vulnerable individuals and families, to secure a stable future for them. Here’s what is at risk. Hundreds of households who we have successfully moved out of homelessness, with supportive case management, could find themselves once again with no place to live. Many of them are disabled, elderly, living with serious medical issues, or navigating significant mental illness and have been stably housed in our programs for years. These are our most successful programs, housing the most at-risk people, and these funding cuts will slash them by 70% or more.
People like Steven who worked his entire life at local restaurants until he was diagnosed with cancer and unmanaged diabetes; and 70-year-old Janice who fled family violence; or our outreach team who connected with Sarah, a single mother living in a car with her young child.
"Hospitality House is more than a place to live, they are my family."
And then there’s Richard, who some of you may know as Santa. Living in a barn after suffering multiple traumatic brain injuries, Richard came to us in 2012 and has been stably housed in our programs ever since. Richard takes care of our chickens, mows our grass in the summer, and assists our food service staff each day. Richard isn’t shy about telling anyone he encounters, “Hospitality House is more than a place to live, they are my family.” Continuing successes like these require dedicated staff and a committed community that focuses on people who are reclaiming hope and the power of home as they rebuild their lives. This is our combined faith in action.
I want you to know that we are up to the challenge. In the first ten months of this year we moved, a record, 377 people out of homelessness, 34% of them children. That is already a 42% increase over last year, with two months still to be counted.
Hope means persevering in spite of the naysayers, the ones who choose to only see the stereotype instead of the person. Housing is the solution to ending homelessness and we are not about to let this momentum slip away. We are not going to turn our backs on our most vulnerable. Even as we face these challenges, we are going to keep showing up, because that is faith in action.
It is critical that Hospitality House continues to be a housing solution and able to keep people from being forced back into homelessness. Every step in the journey to stability requires purposeful and resilient action; both for the people working to achieve it and the people making it possible. That’s you! You are one of those people! We know what ends homelessness, the proof is in the sheer number of people we are getting housed.
I hope that I can count on you to help us keep the momentum going and meet these challenges head on!
With gratitude this holiday season,
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Executive Director
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