Senior Times (May 15, 2006) – HOH Featured
House of Hope Solves Homelessness
At one time Tina, a single mother of four beautiful daughters lived at House of Hope Shelter. Tina lived at the shelter for close to two years. When she first arrived, she heard that House of Hope was going to build an apartment building in the back yard. At first, she did not believe it. Tina knew that building a brand new apartment house would cost a lot of money – she wondered, how could the shelter ever find that much money?
However, within a few months, in April of 2004, there was a big celebration to begin the construction. Tina watched the progress, from the foundation to the steel to the framing and the exterior walls and all the cement trucks coming and going. As she watched she often prayed, asking God if one day she and her children might call the pretty yellow building that she was watching being built, home. In April of 2005, Tina’s prayers were answered as she and her four lovely daughters moved into New Hope Apartment.
The House of Hope is a shelter serving families from throughout the greater Lowell area. Since the early 1980’s, it has grown from a small, grassroots organization providing the very basics of food, shelter and clothing to one of the largest and most comprehensive congregate shelters in the Commonwealth.
Today, House of Hope serves eighteen families and in addition to the above mentioned basic services, the shelter also provides case management, early childhood support, health and employment assistance as well as on site mental health and addiction recovery counseling.
As the shelter has grown, the courageous staff and board of directors has realized that as hard as we work to help currently homeless families we also need to be a part of solving this serious social crisis and demonstrate that there is a better way to help homeless families.
To that end, we have created ten units of permanent supportive housing serving families from our shelter who, in addition to living in poverty, have mental health or substance abuse challenges in their lives. Achieving this goal has required a creative and collaborative partnership between many organizations including the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, the City of Lowell, Lowell Housing Authority, local business leaders including Belanger and Foley Engineering, Gavin and Sullivan Architects, and JBM General Contractors.
Right now, House of Hope is celebrating a major milestone, the one-year anniversary of New Hope Apartments. Located in the backyard of the shelter, New Hope is serving the original ten formerly homeless families by providing them both a home and an extended community of caring individuals and organizations. The entire project cost just over 2 million dollars to develop and the monthly subsidy to support these fortunate families is less then one third of what is costs to shelter them. House of Hope is convinced, that by all standards, permanent housing is a better policy response to family homelessness then shelters ever could be. The success of House of Hope is due to many reasons; strong board leadership, a committed and loving staff, great public sector support but mostly our achievements are because we have been supported and embraced by the community at large. Individuals, churches, schools, businesses and clubs have supported our mission by donating from our published needs list, giving always needed financial support, and prayerfully supporting our mission. If you would like to learn more about House of Hope or our current needs, you can view our newsletter on line at hopelowell.org or call the Executive Director, Deb Chausse at 978-458- 2870.
