Shelter and Emergency Services
In 2015 Neighborhood Alliance’s Haven Center provided shelter for 429 individuals; 115 of the
residents were children. By September 2015, 30 children were residing in the emergency shelter.
One of the families had eight children and had been homeless for a couple of months by the time
they entered the shelter. After living with families and friends, also crowding into a borrowed RV,
they needed to have a more stable residence for the children to attend school. The Haven Center
was the only shelter that could accommodate a family of 10. When they entered the Haven
Center, a plan was established in order to register all the children for school and childcare,
refer the father to LCADA for treatment, and help the mother arrange transportation and
babysitters so she could seek employment. Mom was able to begin working at a group home and
was soon working overtime while looking for long term housing. Although the family stayed at the
shelter for four months, they were able to get a lot accomplished including: school registration,
childcare, addiction treatment, clothing, Medicaid and food stamps applications, employment, car
repair, and saving for the first months security deposit/rent assistance. Christmas gifts were
provided for all the children with even a few family gifts provided thanks to the Christmas for Caring donors. At this time mom is still employed and the family is still in their apartment.
Although this was one family, we repeated the same case management for all 429 persons that
entered the shelter. Additional services such as referral to Social Security to start processing
benefits or G.E.D. classes to improve employment opportunities were also provided.