Saturday, May 23, 2009
Network a safe haven for homeless families
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Tonight four families with nowhere else to go will sleep in a converted church room at Raleigh Court United Methodist. Before bed, volunteers will fix them dinner. When they wake, volunteers will make them breakfast.
On Monday, the families will have moved to South Roanoke United Methodist Church, where once again they will have meals and a safe place to sleep provided by the host and supporting congregations.
Then they will go off to work, or school, or the family center at the Roanoke Valley Interfaith Hospitality Network in Salem. There they can do laundry and get help with budgeting, resume writing, job interviewing and other life skills.
Established 12 years ago, the hospitality network is one of more than 130 organizations across the country affiliated with Family Promise, a national nonprofit dedicated to trying to eradicate homelessness.
The Roanoke Valley network operates with the help of 31 local faith groups spanning every major religion and denomination. On Sunday, volunteers raised about $8,000 to support the network's programs at its fourth annual walk-a-thon fundraiser. But demand is rising and more volunteers, host and supporting congregations and cash are needed, said network director John McDowell.
As the recession has deepened and area businesses have cut hours and jobs, the Roanoke network has seen requests for its services rise about 40 percent from two years ago, McDowell said.
That demand may also signal a shift in the demographics of homelessness. In the past, at least half of the network's clients were young single mothers. Today, McDowell said the group is seeing more and more two-parent families. For this group, homelessness "is really often triggered by the loss of a job," followed by eviction, he said.
The story is much the same in the New River Valley, where New River Community Action director Terry Smusz said requests for homelessness prevention services jumped 47 percent over the past fiscal year.
If this recession worsens, the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis -- a think tank affiliated with the Richmond-based Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy -- predicted in a recent report that "rising unemployment could push an additional 122,000 to 218,000 Virginians into poverty this year, with children accounting for between 44,000 and 73,000 of this increase."
Despite cuts to the budgets of some of the network's participating churches, "they've upped their donations to us," McDowell said. "We're really appreciative of that."
While the contributions of faith groups to the social safety net are rarely tracked and hard to quantify, they are believed to be significant, said John McInerney of the Commonwealth Institute.
A national survey conducted in 2007 by the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy suggested that statistically, about half of the nation's congregations provide direct social services, including homelessness prevention, marriage and family counseling, senior programs and emergency food and clothing assistance.
On the Web: www.rvihn.com.
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Construction was scheduled to begin earlier this week at the Roanoke Rescue Mission's Thrasher Graduate House, said Rescue Mission Development Director Lee Clark. When renovations are completed, the facility will provide six efficiency apartments for graduates of the mission's substance abuse program. All labor for the project is being donated by members of Thrasher Memorial United Methodist Church in Vinton.
