Charlotte Family Housing Inc.

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 2019-2020, CFH served 709 individuals in 224 families, including 465 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 2019-2020:

• 95% of families exited the Housing Phase into stable, sustainable, and unsubsidized permanent housing
• 96% of families sustained housing for at least two years after completing the CFH program (based on a client contact rate of 86%)
• 86% of the families exiting the CFH program were able to maintain or increase their income since program entry
• Since April of 2019, 53 CFH families report that they have started a journey toward home ownership. Of the 53, 29 have purchased and now live in their new homes.

These outcomes remain consistent with our results to date since 2012. Between the fiscal years 2012 and 2020, CFH served 1,147 families, including 2,525 children. Our findings validate that our model can break the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness.

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 21 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.

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.

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 2019-2020, CFH served 709 individuals in 224 families, including 465 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 2019-2020:

• 95% of families exited the Housing Phase into stable, sustainable, and unsubsidized permanent housing
• 96% of families sustained housing for at least two years after completing the CFH program (based on a client contact rate of 86%)
• 86% of the families exiting the CFH program were able to maintain or increase their income since program entry
• Since April of 2019, 53 CFH families report that they have started a journey toward home ownership. Of the 53, 29 have purchased and now live in their new homes.

These outcomes remain consistent with our results to date since 2012. Between the fiscal years 2012 and 2020, CFH served 1,147 families, including 2,525 children. Our findings validate that our model can break the cycle of generational poverty and homelessness. In the fiscal year 2020-2021, CFH’s goals include serving and empowering 740 individuals in 231 families.

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 140 families 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.