Press Room

In January 2010, Building Changes released a report documenting five years of outcomes for homeless families served by the Washington Families Fund. The Fund supports innovative programs around affordable housing paired with support services, such as employment training and education; children’s programs; parenting classes; and financial planning that helps families stabilize their lives and become self-sufficient.

The United Way of Greater Attleboro and Taunton won a $350,000 grant from the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation to help the cities of Attleboro, Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford and surrounding towns to help "divert, prevent and eliminate homelessness and housing insecurities for individuals and families."

The Valley of the Sun United Way is partnering with the Arizona Department of Health Services and the city of Tempe on a pilot project that will provide 35 affordable housing units to people who have been homeless for more than a year.

The Kitchen is one of the newest pieces of an unusual culinary endeavor that the Boston-based Melville Charitable Trust is trying here as part of its mission to address homelessness. The effort began nearly three years ago with Firebox, a farm-to-table restaurant. It’s all housed at Billings Forge, a complex of rehabilitated industrial buildings with 98 units of mixed-income housing in Frog Hollow, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, barely two blocks from the Capitol. The Melville Trust bought the complex for $5 million in 2005. Since then, its web of integrated food operations has become the cornerstone of Melville’s strategy to bring services, jobs and business to Frog Hollow.

At 19 of the 20 schools that the Education Department announced last month it plans to shut down, the number of homeless kids jumped by more than 100%. The increase swamped social workers and left principals scrambling for after-school funding to give kids a place to go after classes ended, teachers and administrators say.

In a Housing and Urban Development survey last year, 2,000 New Jersey adults said they were homeless because they had been forced from their apartments. While some, no doubt, had been evicted legally for nonpayment, the HUD survey concluded foreclosure-based evictions accounted for much of the 70 percent increase in the number of homeless former renters.

Although the National Institute of Mental Health said that only about 6 percent of America's overall population was classified as severely mentally ill in 2009, between 20 and 25 percent of America's homeless suffers from some form of severe mental illness, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Shelters aren't well equipped or trained to handle the special needs of people with mental illnesses.

The Street to Home Foundation today released its long-awaited plan to address homelessness. The 10-year plan outlines three primary goals: Build new supportive housing, prevent homelessness among at-risk groups, and nurture community involvement.

The walls are bare. The closets, nearly empty. And there's barely any furniture inside. But for 40 formerly homeless women, the Pebbles Apartments are home sweet home.

While 2009 saw donation declines for more than half of nonprofit groups nationwide, and while more than a third of organizations making grants to nonprofits saw their totals drop, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation bucked the trend.