Sixty Families Housed in Four Months (April-July 2009)

We have good news . In the past four months Raphael House moved 60 families into their own apartments. The biggest part of the credit goes to the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation who gave us a grant to move families directly into housing by paying security deposit and other move-in costs. The approach is called "Housing First" and it is working beautifully.

Forty-three of these families (161 individuals:66adults/95 children)were direct recipients of these Housing first monies. The time period was April 6 through August 6 and the total expense was $66,236.00.

There are big advantages to this approach. Without the benefit of Housing First monies, the average length of stay for a family at Raphael House is three months. We have 17 private bedrooms for families. Quick calculations in your head show it would have been impossible to shelter so many families all at once without Housing First monies. This grant essentially tripled our capacity during these past four months. The cost came to a little over $1300 dollars per family- less than it would have cost to shelter and feed each of these families on a temporary basis.

Our thanks to the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation !