Family Promise of Warren County Ohio

Our Mission Statement: "To assist Warren County homeless families achieve sustainable independence through a community-based response.”

Our Vision: "To have a county where every family has a home, a livelihood and a future full of promise."

Interfaith Hospitality Network opened its doors in Warren County as a community response to family homelessness on October 1, 1998. This endeavor began with ambitious intentions: find sustainable housing solutions for families while preserving and nourishing family bonds – the bonds that are essential to a household. Families and their homes are both uniquely greater than the sum of their parts. In the IHNWC program, it is of paramount importance to preserve the intangible components of the household, and success is truly a community effort. IHNWC works with the community to ensure each family receives the comforts and resources that are commonly sacrificed during the crisis of homelessness. Through 20 years of collaboration between network congregations, the community, and IHNWC the goal was transformed into reality for 695 families

IHNWC has revised our strategic vision to move forward with a permanent facility, in parallel to our church rotational network, the goal being to open in 2022. The new facility will include expanded temporary housing, food service, and hospitality facilities for our families as well as on-site staff offices. The new facility will better enable families to stage for daily work, education, and engagement of our staff and will better serve families with handicapped members versus moving from church-to-church weekly. This public facility will also enable IHNWC to engage more of corporate/industrial Warren County to support the families with meals, hospitality, and overnight hosts via their community outreach programs, beyond the over 30 local corporate groups that support us today.

Our staff is highly trained to work with families and family backgrounds to find appropriate housing and housing benefits: federal, state, & local governments, as well as private sources. Similarly, once the family situation is better understood the staff helps with referrals to other agencies and institutions that support education and training to move the family into a more sustainable livelihood. We have hired an "after-shelter" facilitator who continues frequent contact with the families after moving into permanent housing to prevent a return to homelessness.

We have a staff of 7 highly trained and skilled consultants, including our Executive Director, Linda Rabolt. The staff includes: 1 Case Manager, 1 Day Center Coordinator, 2 Homeless Crisis Response Coordinators, 1 Special Events Coordinator (e.g. family finance, nutrition, and housekeeping education programs), and 1 Office Assistant. We also have two CDL drivers to shuttle the families from shelter to day center to work and education sites.

We also maintain a warehouse of gently used furniture that the families can chose (free) as the move into their permanent housing. The warehouse also has a two bedroom apartment that we have converted to a elementary/high school online facility for students to continue their education during the Covid crisis.

- We have served over 850 families find housing in the 20 years of operation. We track year-over-year trends.
- In 2019 we supported 43 families, 127 individuals, 74 children, 43 children under 6, and 9 unborn children through birth.
- We have referred over 14,000 referrals since our founding with1168 in 2019.
- We hired an after-shelter coordinator in 2018 and are working through historic data on family abilities to remain in permanent housing.