Mats & Shelter from the Storm
The Social Justice Special collection is matched by the Congregation Service Fund.
MATS and Shelter From the Storm are transitional shelters with over a dozen apartments between them.
MATS was started in 1991 and Shelter From the Storm in 2005. MATS was founded by members of this church, the UCC and All Saints. Since MATS founding it has always had a member of this church on its board.
Transitional shelters are not emergency shelters, you cannot just walk in and find a bed. Their purpose is to give their guests the time to get back on their feet after losing their housing because it became totally unaffordable or lost their job as their car had broke down.
One family’s story
I watch my kids splash, muddy and squealing. In this moment they are happy and carefree, and I’m just thankful I have a tub to throw them in when they finish playing in puddles. Such a simple thing, splashing in puddles, but not something I could allow them to do if we were still living in the car instead of staying in transitional housing. Every kid should be able to splash in puddles without worrying about getting cleaned up and warm.
We were renting a house when our landlord was foreclosed on. Then bank held an auction and a local developer bought it. They immedediately evicted us despite our lease and good payment history.
Could you find yourself somewhere to live with no money, on 30 days notice? Our rent was 45% of our income, and with a car always in need of repairs we had no savings to move. No one in my family had space for us to double up with, or money to lend us. We found ourselves facing homelessness as a family of six in the worst February in recent memory.
Luckily, we found a place in transitional housing. But that does not solve the problem, it just provides stability to give you time to react to the situation with something other than panic. Even when I had saved up enough, it took months to find a place to live.
With poor credit, four kids, and rent that would be half of our income, most landlords had plenty of better options to choose from. Eight months later we finally found a landlord with some compassion who looked at our references and not our credit report. But we are still as vulnerable to homelessness as we were. We are just one disruption away from having good options.
Please be generous in your contributions, thank you.
