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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Daycare for homeless families may close.

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posted by Bob at Wednesday, May 23, 2007

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Blogger Bob said...

St. Paul day center for homeless families may close

The St. Paul day shelter is specifically designed to help families.

St. Paul's only day center for homeless families is facing a budget crunch and may have to close in June.

By Curt Brown, Star Tribune

Last update: May 22, 2007 – 10:08 PM

Where: 244 E. 10th St. , St. Paul, behind the First Baptist Church.

Founded: In 2001 to give homeless families a place to spend days when Maplewood facility is full.

Annual budget: $450,000

Current shortfall: $50,000

Employees: Five full-time; three part-time.

For more information: Call 651-207-1565 or e-mail director Margaret Lovejoy at mlovejoy@famplace.org.

More about The Family Place

Where: 244 10th St. , St. Paul, behind the First Baptist Church.

Founded: In 2001 to give homeless families a place to spend days when Maplewood facility is full.

Annual budget: $450,000

Current shortfall: $50,000

Employees: Five full-time; three part-time.

For more information: Call 651-207-1565 or e-mail director Margaret Lovejoy at mlovejoy@famplace.org.

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Jennifer Pawarski is 16 and homeless, but she and her mother found a safe haven this week at The Family Place -- a unique day shelter for homeless families tucked behind a downtown St. Paul church.
"They make me feel comfortable here and I don't really feel comfortable anywhere," Pawarski said. "This place makes me feel like home."

But that's in jeopardy, owing to a $50,000 budget shortfall. Now, the Family Place may have to close by the end of June unless enough money can be raised in the next six weeks, according to founder and director Margaret Lovejoy.

She said a record numbers of visits from homeless families, coupled with a $17,000 cut in federal aid and shrinking donations from individuals, places of worship and foundations, has prompted the squeeze.

Since 2001, the Family Place annually has offered more than 400 families a safe place to shower, play, wash laundry, eat warm meals, fine-tune resumes and search for housing. Without the Family Place, homeless parents in St. Paul with young children may have to spend their days on the street or at the Dorothy Day Center and the Listening House, two adult homeless facilities.

"The Family Place is the only facility specifically for parents with children and without this program, there will be real negative fallout across the board from mixing the populations downtown," said Rosemarie Reger-Rumsey, who directs the Listening House drop-in center.

Mixing young children with homeless adults is inappropriate, experts say, because the kids could be exposed to everything from foul language to convicted felons. The flip side isn't ideal, either.

"We work with highly addictive personalities, many of whom struggle with mental illness," Reger-Rumsey said. "Normal children activity, such as noise and crying, sets off any number of people in our facility."

Not an isolated squeeze

The Family Place and Project Home, its nonprofit partner, work as overflow shelters when Ramsey County's 55-bed homeless family facility in Maplewood fills up.

Families are put up in the evenings at a number of worship centers that rotate monthly and are organized by Project Home, a 10-year offshoot of the St. Paul Area Council of Churches.

Those overflow families spend their days at the Family Place, which also handles all Ramsey County's intake services for homeless families.

Project Home director Sara Liegl said that her overnight shelter is facing budget troubles similar to those at the Family Place. If things don't improve by the end of the year, they'll have to cut down from two churches or synagogues each night to one, she said.

"In the last 10 months alone, we have seen record numbers of visits six times," Liegl said.

In January 2006, about 10 homeless family members used the Family Place and Project Home each day. This January, the number rose to about 25 people a day.

"If we have to use a lottery where some families stay at churches and others on mats at Dorothy Day, how long will it be until that chaos gets emotionally out of hand?" Lovejoy said.

The Family Place has an annual operating budget of $450,000, with five fulltime workers and three part-timers, making for a modest-sized service organization. Lovejoy said shutting her doors or only handling the intake services "would be a huge injustice to the children's innocence.

"I'll work for free, but how long can I expect my staff to hang in there and depend on volunteers?" she said.

Pawarski's mother, Gerri Lee, said that without the Family Place, "we'd be on the streets, literally on the streets."

Walter Blount was vacuuming at the center the other day. He recalled when his wife and three kids, ages 5 through 11, moved to Minnesota two years ago from Tennessee. They spent four months at the Family Place and now have their own apartment.

"It's a shame this is the only place for the homeless families of St. Paul," Blount said. "It plays an important role is no many lives."


Curt Brown • 651-298-1542 • curt.brown@startribune.com

10:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But St.Paul needs things such as the light rail? Its seems there is always money and funds available for what the representitives of the community seem to feel is of importance to them, not looking at situations such as this and the effects it will have on the less fortunate families or their children.

Nancy

11:35 AM  

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