Searching for a home: Family Promise to seek own homeless shelter
Apr. 15—BEVERLY — Family Promise North Shore Boston, a nonprofit that has helped hundreds of homeless families by using a network of churches as emergency shelters, is planning to establish a shelter of its own.
The board of directors of the Beverly-based organization has voted to give up its rotational shelter model and look to operate its own shelter somewhere on the North Shore.
Family Promise North Shore Boston board president Tucker Bixby said having a single "static" shelter will be better for families, who won't have to travel back and forth between churches and the organization's day center.
"We just felt like from almost every standpoint it makes the most sense where we can get to the point where we can be more efficient," Bixby said.
The decision to pursue a permanent shelter site was precipitated when Family Promise had to stop using churches as shelters during the pandemic. The organization was forced to house three families at its former day center site on Rantoul Street in Beverly.
Since then, the organization has moved out of the day center and rented a house at 8 Rantoul St., where two families can stay. Another family is staying at an apartment in Salem. The organization has also has launched new programs to help people stay in their current housing.
"The goal of the programs is to keep people where they are," Family Promise Executive Director Rachel Hand said. "The system can be very overwhelming to families when they're in crisis."
Family Promise North Shore Boston, an affiliate of the national Family Promise organization, began in 2013 when about 40 congregations teamed up to help homeless families. Volunteers took turns hosting up to four families overnight in churches or synagogues for a week at a time. In the morning, families were taken by van to a day center in Beverly, where children could be picked up by their home district to go to school.
The benefit of that model is that a small nonprofit like Family Promise North Shore Boston can help families without the major expense of providing its own shelter. But Bixby said all of the moving around was also taxing for families and inefficient for the organization. He said the organization is now in a position to take on the challenge of pursuing its own shelter.
"It was a great way to get it off the ground, but now we're at the point where we believe we can start investing in the organization and make things more efficient for the long term," he said.
Bixby said Family Promise will take at least a year to put together a plan for how to go about finding a new shelter, including the potential cost, which will depend on whether it buys or rents a building or builds a new one. He said the organization would prefer to stay in Beverly but could end up somewhere else on the North Shore.
Bixby said having its own shelter will raise the visibility of Family Promise and bring in more community support. The organization will continue to partner with the many volunteers that have made the program work through the church network.
"The best part about Family Promise is the community aspect of it," Hand said. "We're one of the only shelters that relies on volunteers to operate. Because of that our families are exposed to so many different people and build a network of support."
Bixby said other Family Promise affiliates across the country have established their own shelters, and the national organization is supportive of the move. Ultimately, he said, it will allow Family Promise North Shore Boston to help more families.
"I'm confident we can do it," he said.
Staff writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
