Mission Statement
House of Hope is a shelter for homeless, pregnant and parenting adults between the ages of 18 and 24 (parenting youth), and their children. Since we opened our doors in 2000, our mission has been to provide a safe, supportive place where young parents learn to become confident adults and independent, successful parents.
Description
House of Hope provides a structured environment for hands-on life skills training. In order to provide a safe, supportive environment, we are staffed with awake staff 24-hours a day. We work side by side with these young parents on basic living skills such as meal planning, proper health care and hygiene, bedtime routines, budgeting, healthy relationships, and positive parenting. We require residents to participate in structured case management services to identify their individual needs and goals related to parenting, education, and employment.
Our target population is homeless youth who began parenting as teens. The young people who enter our program often come from transient and unsafe living situations with backgrounds of generational poverty. Many of our young clients not only began parenting as teens, but were also born to teen parents themselves. Consequently, they have not graduated high school, have little or no work experience or job skills, and have significant history of sexual and physical abuse.
We believe by providing these young families the safety of shelter, we are saving them from having to make choices that would continue to put both themselves and their children in increasingly vulnerable positions. We also believe by providing homeless youth with appropriate support, we assist them in breaking the cycle of poverty and improve their quality of life.
