Charlotte Family Housing Inc.
Helping empower working families experiencing homelessness
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
In 2022 the average rent for an apartment in Charlotte is $1,559. Real Data, an apartment-tracking service, reported in September of 2020 that the average rent in Charlotte is $1,229 per month, which reflects an increase of 7.6% from February of 2018. The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2020 Out of Reach report states that Mecklenburg County families need to work 113 hours per week at the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, or earn an hourly wage of $20.44 per hour, to afford a two-bedroom apartment. According to a report by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute in September of 2020, over 81,600 renter households in Charlotte were “cost-burdened” in 2018, spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Unforeseen events or chronic circumstances like a loss of income, illness, family breakup, death in the family, or domestic violence can send already fragile families into homelessness. Those factors, compounded by the COVID-19 crisis, leave Charlotte Family Housing antic
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Shelter Phase
Families’ immediate needs are met through temporary shelter in one of two facilities: Hawthorne Place and Plaza Place. Here they have safe, temporary housing and can begin moving toward stabilization and independent living. Charlotte Family Housing's (CFH) team of licensed clinical social workers, resident advisors, housing resource coordinators, and volunteers collaborate to motivate, encourage, guide, and support our families. Together, we increase self-esteem, promote accountability, and influence behavioral change from dependency to confident independence. CFH distinguishes itself by serving working families experiencing homelessness in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
Housing Phase
During the shelter phase of the program, housing resource coordinators connect families with permanent housing through a network of nearly 70 partner housing provider/landlords in 21 zip codes across the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. We work with participating housing provider/landlords and provide rental subsidies that span the gap between the families’ earning capacity and the market rental rate until they can sustain housing on their own.
Where we work
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Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of clients served
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Children and youth, Homeless people, Ethnic and racial groups
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of people in the area with access to affordable housing as a result of the nonprofit's efforts
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Children and youth, Ethnic and racial groups, Homeless people
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of clients for whom the transition plan is fully implemented (including receipt of all services as planned)
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Children and youth, Ethnic and racial groups, Homeless people
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of service recipients who are employed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Ethnic and racial groups, Homeless people
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
All families served by Charlotte Family Housing (CFH) are working families. The numbers listed represent the number of families served in each year.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Since 2011, the mission of Charlotte Family Housing (CFH) has addressed two well-documented areas of concern in Mecklenburg County: Affordable Housing and Social Mobility. Our mission is to empower working families experiencing homelessness to achieve life-long self-sufficiency through shelter, housing, supportive services, and advocacy. Our program aims to fight cyclical poverty and make a difference today that positively affects future generations.
CFH is truly a program “for all.” CFH does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, age, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status in any of its activities or operations. In the fiscal year 2020-2021, CFH served 723 individuals in 239 families, including 484 children. CFH evaluates its ultimate success by calculating the number of individuals served and how many families maintain housing upon leaving our program. CFH continues to document our assessment of a family’s progress at three-month intervals after program completion. Our outcomes validate that our model can break the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness. According to our most recent client surveys for FY 2020-2021:
• 95% of families exited the subsidized Housing Phase into stable, sustainable, and unsubsidized permanent housing
• 100% of families sustained housing for at least 2 years after completing the CFH program (based on a client contact rate of 93%)
• 74% of the families exiting the CFH program were able to maintain or increase their income since program entry
• Since October of 2018, 57 CFH families garnered a mortgage to buy a home.
These outcomes remain consistent with our results to date since 2012. Between the fiscal years 2012 and 2021, CFH served 1,147 families, including 2,525 children. Our findings validate that our model can break the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
The services provided by Charlotte Family Housing (CFH) address the affordable housing crisis in our community while concurrently combating poverty. CFH serves an often “unnoticed" population: parents who fill critical roles such as cashiers, bank tellers, bus drivers, and even school teachers. They are the backbone of our economy, often suffering under tremendous financial stress. Compensated with low wages and frequently spending more than 50% of their income on rent, one crisis – a family breakup, an illness, an unexpected loss of income – can send fragile families spiraling into homelessness.
Since 2011, CFH has empowered working families experiencing homelessness to achieve life-long self-sufficiency through shelter, housing, supportive services, and advocacy. Our strategic model is built on three crucial components:
1. Housing families: At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, CFH nimbly adapted to physical distancing requirements recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and local government officials by modifying its shelter phase. Working families experiencing homelessness begin their journey to self-sufficiency at either CFH’s primary shelter facility or a CFH-approved hotel. Families can then concentrate on a wide variety of goals without worrying about where their children will sleep each night. CFH assists people leaving the shelter phase to obtain subsidized transitional housing, ultimately preparing them for unsubsidized housing within a year or two. Housing resource coordinators connect families with housing through a network of over 70 partner housing providers in 22 zip codes across the city. We work with participating housing providers and landlords, and provide rental subsidies that span the gap between the families’ earning capacity and the market rental rate until they can sustain housing on their own.
2. Partnership and Counseling: In collaboration with several community partners, CFH’s licensed clinical social workers provide wraparound supportive services for each family. They address barriers to family stability and facilitate pathways to financial literacy, education, health and wellness, and job readiness. CFH is a trauma-informed agency which employs nationally recognized practices to help families heal from the trauma of poverty and homelessness.
3. Empowering Tools: CFH employs a two-generation approach focused on fostering independence instead of enabling dependence. Through social worker-led programming and counseling, financial literacy training for parents and children, collaboration with community partners, and volunteer support, all family members over 18 years of age gain access to living-wage employment, establish financial goals, and achieve long-term financial stability.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The ultimate success of the services provided by Charlotte Family Housing (CFH) to help empower working families experiencing homelessness is evaluated by calculating the number of individuals served and how many families maintain housing upon leaving our program. CFH uses Salesforce software for data collection and we document a family’s progress at three-month intervals after program completion. CFH’s quantitative outcome measurement analytics include:
• the number of individuals and families CFH serves and empowers
• percentage of families exiting one of CFH’s shelters into housing
• percentage of families sustaining housing for at least two years after completing CFH’s program
• percentage of families exiting CFH who maintain or increase their household income
To analyze outcomes, CFH uses a model that ties outcomes to programs and resources; aligns tasks with goals; and assesses family results through client interviews, surveys, and social workers’ ongoing observations. We then use this data to promote our continuous improvement model in response to outcome analysis.
The supportive services offered by CFH are enhanced by several community collaborations. In fiscal year 2020, CFH established new partnerships with Furnish for Good, the Charlotte Resilience Project, and Read Charlotte. This growth complements collaborations already in place with Central Piedmont Community College, Child Care Resources, Inc., Common Wealth Charlotte, Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity, and Promising Pages, among others. Several of these collaborations are being integrated into our two-generation (2Gen) approach to benefit both the parents and children of the families we serve. Some examples include:
• Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) provides CFH families with group and individual career and educational coaching, as well as access to CPCC classes. In turn, CPCC students with children, who find themselves homeless and meet our program’s criteria, can access the CFH program.
• Common Wealth Charlotte assists CFH families with adult financial literacy training.
• The State Employees’ Credit Union holds “Reality of Money” semiannual training events for teens. During this financial simulation, teens are assigned an education level, a job, an income and a credit score. They then experience creating a monthly budget based on those parameters. This allows teens to learn about how factors such as education level, credit score, family size and marital status can impact their financial futures.
• Promising Pages provides age-appropriate, culturally relevant books for CFH shelters and CFH family members’ home libraries.
Aligning with agencies dedicated to serving under-resourced families experiencing homelessness further expands our families' capacities to help them forge a sustainable path to self-sufficiency. We believe in the resiliency, resourcefulness, strength, and capability of the families we serve.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
As a result of continuous process improvements, staff development, volunteer engagement, and generous community support, Charlotte Family Housing (CFH) has seen consistent quantitative outcomes since our establishment in 2011.
In the fiscal year 2020-2021, CFH served 723 individuals in 239 families, including 484 children. CFH evaluates its ultimate success by calculating the number of individuals served and how many families maintain housing upon leaving our program. CFH continues to document our assessment of a family’s progress at three-month intervals after program completion. Our outcomes validate that our model can break the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness. According to our most recent client surveys for FY2021:
• 95% of families exited the subsidized Housing Phase into stable, sustainable, and unsubsidized permanent housing
• 100% of families sustained housing for at least 2 years after completing the CFH program (based on a client contact rate of 93%)
• 74% of the families exiting the CFH program were able to maintain or increase their income since program entry
• Since October of 2018, 57 CFH families garnered a mortgage to buy a home.
Our families represent an extremely vulnerable population. Over 50% of CFH families experienced a reduction in hours and job loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic to the point that they need additional financial assistance for rent, food, and other necessities. Our social workers help each family identify their needs and then provide them through support from CFH or collaborative agencies. The goal at CFH is for 100% of the families that are currently in our program to remain stably housed. Their recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 crisis will be more difficult because of a combination of severe economic hardship and lack of resources like proper health insurance, paid sick leave, and access to quality healthcare.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, The people we serve tell us they find data collection burdensome, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Charlotte Family Housing Inc.
Board of directorsas of 04/08/2022
Mr. Doug Hulse
Bank of America
Term: 2019 - 2021
Mr. Paul Finnen
Paul E. Finnen Associates
Term: 2020 - 2023
Beth Bell
Fashion & Compassion
Dan Cottingham
Cottingham Chalk Hayes Realtors
Eric Moody
RBC Capital Markets
Chris Turner
CBI Workplace Solutions
Paul Baalman
Crosland Southeast
Lamont Simmons
LS Maintenance Management LLC
Gary Davies
Cape Asset Management
Jessica Kerr
Towne Bank
Tricia Wilson Magee
US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina
Matt Ricketts
Wells Fargo
Natalie Alston
Natalie Alston Interiors
Darren Ash
The ROC
Elizabeth Dickens
Self-Employed
Ben Hill
RSM Company
Robert Hoyla
Truist
Kari Kalgren
Premier Inc.
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 12/30/2020GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.