Blog: Homelessness Ends Here

The Frey Family Foundation announced yesterday that it is making a new $5 million investment to expand its past support for advocacy efforts to end homelessness across the state, becoming the third member of Funders Together's national Steering Committee to announce a major gift to fight homelessness in the past two weeks. In a terrific article at MinnPost.com, foundation president and CEO Jim Frey discusses the goals and motivation of his family's renewed dedication and focus in this area, even as the foundation's resources are taking a significant hit due to the drop in the stock market.

Here's an excerpt:

In the midst of economic gloom and doom, there remain good organizations doing good deeds.

The Frey Foundation of Minnesota, for example, is announcing Wednesday that it is giving $5 million to several organizations to provide support services for the homeless.

"There are cynics among us who say, 'They're homeless because they're lazy,' " said Frey. "There may be a few like that. But in the main, what we know is that these are people who love their children as much as we love ours. These are people who didn't set out in their lives to be homeless. Some may have made bad choices. In other cases, it was bad turns of fate. There's not one reason. But what you learn when you spend time with homeless people is that they're really no different than you or me."

...The foundation didn't find what it now considers its niche — homeless support — until a few years ago.

"We looked at where we could make the biggest difference with limited dollars," Frey said. "It come back to more than stable housing. It comes back to people having a chance to stabilize their lives."

If kids grow up in unstable environments, their own chances of making it to stability [and] productivity will be diminished.

"What a terrible waste of lives that is," Frey said.

Read the full article...