Program & Services

 

Ending Family Homelessness


Housing Families serves over 600 homeless, near-homeless, or newly housed children and family members each day.

We believe in a holistic approach to assisting families that addresses the complex circumstances that lead to housing loss, as well as the sustained negative effects that result from homelessness.

Housing Families case managers and program staff provide individualized care and advocacy for all family members beginning with each family's arrival to Transitional Shelter and continuing throughout the journey toward maintaining a stable, permanent household.

 

Assisting Families in their Homes - STEADY Homes Initiative

Housing Families recognizes that homelessness results from the combined effects of poverty, lack of affordable housing, decreased government funding, lack of education, domestic violence, and other fractured social supports. At Housing Families, we believe that an end to family homelessness can be made possible by increasing the inventory of permanent affordable housing and providing high-quality supportive services to meet the needs of all family members. Our Shelter, Eviction Prevention, Stabilization and Helping Homes Programs operate under the STEADY Homes Initiative, Housing Families' overarching philosophy to ending homelessness. This initiative ensures that families become STEADY in their homes by addressing the key components to family stability: Safety and health, Tenancy skills, Economic development, Advocacy, Developing a support network, and Youth services. Through STEADY, HFI provides individualized support for family members to surmount the challenges of homelessness.

Health & Wellness

Children experiencing homelessness:

  • Are sick four times more often than other children. They have:
    • Four times as many respiratory infections.
    • Twice as many ear infections.
    • Five times more gastrointestinal problems.
    • Four times more likely to have asthma.
  • Go hungry at twice the rate of other children.
  • Have high rates of obesity due to nutritional deficiencies.
  • Have three times the rate of emotional and behavioral problems compared to non-homeless children.
  • Four times more likely to show delayed development.
  • Twice as likely to have learning disabilities as non-homeless children.

Instances of Violence

Violence plays a major role in the lives of homeless children:

  • By age 12, 83% are exposed to at least one serious violent event.
  • Almost 25% witness acts of violence within their families.

 

Families Experiencing Homelessness:

Are most often comprised of a mother in her late twenties with two children.

  • 84% of families experiencing homelessness are female-headed.
  • 42% of children in homeless families are under age six.

Many homeless mothers have sustained past traumas:

  • Over 92% experience severe physical and/or sexual abuse during their lifetime. For 63%, this abuse is perpetrated by an intimate partner.
  • Mothers experiencing homelessness struggle with mental health issues.
    • About 50% experience a major depressive episode since becoming homeless.
    • They have three times the rate of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) (36%) and twice the rate of drug and alcohol dependence (41%).

Over one-third of homeless mothers have a chronic physical health condition.

They have ulcers at four times the rate of other women.

Source: The National Center on Family Homelessness (2008) The Characteristics and Needs of Families Experiencing Homelessness (2008). Available www.familyhomelessness.org


Serving Boston Area Families in Greatest Need

HFI serves very low-income Greater Boston families and individuals who are homeless, near-homeless, or newly-housed—52% of whom are children—at affordable housing facilities in the Massachusetts cities of Malden, Medford, Everett, and Revere. We serve families referred from these and other cities and towns across the Commonwealth, concentrated primarily in Boston and surrounding communities.

We serve a diverse population—approximately 32% Caucasian, 22% African or African American, 30% Hispanic and 16% multiple ethnicities.  Of these, 80% are single parent, female-headed households.  Among adults served, about 33% have some work history and 70% have a high school diploma or equivalent.  About 20% of heads of household were born outside the United States.