Family Promise Montco PA

When families enter our housing program, many have had to leave valuable possessions behind. They arrive with few personal goods and often lack even the most basic essential items. Once families are safely housed in our program, the need for basic supplies continues. Families often lack essential household goods, and maintaining adequate food can be a continuing challenge. Even upon graduating from our programs, families remain vulnerable for some time to disruptions in their stability while they work at building their assets and maintenance of consistent, adequate income. Our Basic Needs Program provides comprehensive support in the form of household and personal care supplies and temporary financial assistance to cover expenses that threaten to disrupt a family’s progress towards stability.

Our Aftercare Program increases the long-term stability of families who have graduated from our emergency, transitional, and supportive housing programs. A volunteer Aftercare Specialist stays in regular contact with graduate families to provide limited case management, financial assistance, and other resources needed to keep the families on track. The Aftercare Specialist also learns about specific challenges families are facing so we can make adjustments to our education program and support services that will better prepare our current residents for a successful transition to permanent housing.

Our Supportive Housing Program at Hope Forest in Ambler opened in January 2017, with a second location, Hope on Fifth in Lansdale, added in 2022. The Supportive Housing Program--the first privately operated supportive housing program in Montgomery County--offers four families an affordable housing option. Families pay fair market rent and receive general oversight from a case manager on a diminishing schedule until they have secured necessary skills to gain and maintain a living wage job and have resolved the issues that have been a barrier to stability in their past.

Hope Gardens, an eight-unit apartment building in Ambler, PA, is home to our stabilizing transitional housing program. Families live at Hope Gardens for up to 2 years, during which time they work toward identified goals for a successful transition to safe, affordable, decent housing. Families living at Hope Gardens receive comprehensive support. Intensive case management helps families develop practical, attainable goals, create a workable budget, obtain childcare, find employment, apply for subsidized and permanent housing, and create a savings plan. Life skills training--a series of educational workshops, which focus on topics such as financial literacy, budgeting, and credit repair, positive parenting, stress management, and healthy relationships--gives them the tools they need to become and stay self-sufficient.

The two Inter-Faith Hospitality Networks maintained by Family Promise provide families experiencing homelessness with up to 90 days of safe, temporary shelter and other support to help them move toward self-sufficiency. In this nondenominational program, more than 60 host and buddy congregations serve families for a rotating period of time each year at their places of worship. Congregational volunteers, who collectively contribute hundreds of hours of their time each year, provide meals and transportation as needed. During the day, families can access one of our two Day Centers in Ambler, PA, and Norristown, PA, where staff provide counseling, case management, and support to help families resolve their homelessness. Families in shelter meet the Federal guidelines for very low or extremely low incomes; most are single-parent, female-headed households with young children.