Mercy House Living Centers

Mercy House exists to serve the homeless in our community at every stage of their struggle. Our mission, "to be a leader in ending homelessness by providing a unique system of dignified housing alternatives, programs, and supportive services" drives every action that we take. With that in mind, Mercy House's main goal is to end homelessness for those who enter our system of care. Every action taken exists to direct the individual or family toward stable, permanent housing. This year, Mercy House has a goal to prevent or end the homelessness of 1,500 individuals.

In order to address the problem of homelessness in our community, Mercy House provides a complete continuum of care to meet the needs of the men, women, and children experiencing homelessness. This contiuum of programming includes the following programs and services:Mercy House serves the homeless in the following ways: homeless prevention, emergency shelter and services, temporary housing, permanent supportive housing, and rapid re-housing services. Mercy House also seeks to advocate for the homeless and educate those who are fortunate enough to make a difference.

All of our growth throughout our 28 years of operation, from a single shelter serving 10 men to now serving over 6,000 annually across three counties , has been tied to clarity of vision and purpose and driven by our mission.

A core strength of ours has been our ability to adhere to our mission with a consistency of understanding between the Board, Staff, the community and key donors alike. At the forefront of this balance, is our well known
integrity as an organization that stems from the treatment of our clients and the quality of our services to our stewardship of grants and donations. The diversity of our range of programs has afforded us the experience of working with a wide-variety of homeless subpopulations . Through our success and innovative approaches, we have earned a reputation as being an authority on homeless issues. We have been contracted as consultants or key advisors with a number of cities to provide strategies and solutions to homelessness within their respective jurisdictions.

Mercy House has grown from a single shelter serving 10 men to now serving over 6,000 across the Southern California area and most recently Arizona. In order to effective solve the problems of homelessness we believe that their are three key areas to propel our growth into the future: 1) Collaboration with other agencies, 2) creation of affordable permanent housing housing and 3) Data driven decision. Mercy House is continually seeking collaborative partners to create systemic change in the communities we serve. In 2015, Mercy House was named lead in a large-scale collaborative grant with five other agencies to provide permanent supportive housing to the chronically homeless in Orange County. In 2016, Mercy House was named as lead in another collaborative grant with seven other geographically diverse agencies to provide Permanent Supportive Housing to a further 61 chronically homeless individuals. Mercy House is also working closely with six like-minded agencies to create a systemic approach to ending homelessness in families. This collaborative has received training from Community Solutions in Critical Time Intervention and is continuing to work closely to right-size services available to homeless families in Orange County. In order to increase permanent housing stock, Mercy House is also working closely with three development partners: Wakeland Housing Corporation, Community Development Partners, and National Community Renaissance. Mercy House has number of new housing development projects in the works throughout Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino County. Over the past few years, Mercy house has initiated program evaluation changes that focus specifically on measuring housing outcomes for our programs. Data drives decisions we make to invest in programs that work, modify or replace programs that don't and ensure that we are making a positive impact by our work.