With help from the Way Home Welcome Home Fund, Houston has successfully housed over 14,500 individuals into housing out of homelessness.The Welcome Home Fund was established to help clients remove barriers to housing including help with deposits & application fees to move into their new home. In addition, the provides a Welcome Baskets full of move-in essentials & furniture to help turn a house into a home. Since 2016 we have distributed over $200,000 of in-kind donations and funds to partners
Many homeless individuals have been homeless for weeks, months, years before accessing services available to them through The Way Home. Imagine leaving your household goods & belongings behind with no means to store them for future use. Much of the permanent supportive housing available to clients requires an application fee. If these obstacles are overcome, once approved for housing, it is typically to an unfurnished unit. Without this fund it is impossible to achieve any kind of normalcy.
The Welcome Home Fund was established to overcome barriers to an individual or family who have been approved for housing. Lead by the Coordinator we work with our system partners (The Way Home) to ensure clients moving into housing are greeted with essentials including a bed to lay on, basic furniture, household goods and, as needed, financial assistance for move-in fees. Without the Coordinator and the accessibility of the Fund to our partners, we would likely see a decline in system progress.
When clients are comfortable in a home they are more likely to stay and receive the support and case management they need to reach their full potential. The Impact of having a bed for your child to sleep is proven to show a more successful student at school. The current retention rate of our clients who stay in housing is over 93% percent. Providing means to assist a client into housing is what the Welcome Home Fund does best, we are the key to ending homelessness.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
