Joining forces to help the homeless

Amid rising homelessness in Rhode Island, Amos House has launched a program that pairs up homeless families with local churches to help them with everything from finding housing, to child care, to transportation, to moral support and encouragement.

The Good Samaritan Project, modeled after a successful program in Denver that Mayor David N. Cicilline heard about and mentioned to Amos House officials, has so far matched five families with congregations in the Providence area.

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The nonprofit, which operates a shelter and a soup kitchen and runs a variety of programs for the poor and homeless, is seeking additional churches to join the effort.

According to the Rhode Island Emergency Food and Shelter Board, homelessness reached an all-time high in the state last year, with 6,889 men, women and children homeless at some point during the year that ended June 30, 2006, an 8-percent increase from the previous year. The number of homeless families also increased, to 882.

Amos House Executive Director Eileen Hayes said she had been working with churches and synagogues to house families, and there was an “enormous desire” to help.

Through the Good Samaritan Project, Hayes said, religious congregations will offer hospitality, support and resources – the same kinds that are available to any family and neighbor but ones that homeless people may not have access to.

Amos House has specifically asked the congregations not to try to convert the families to their religion, Hayes said, but just help them.

“This is an opportunity to reconnect, to have a place to go for a Sunday meal,” she said. “To have somebody drive you to the supermarket once a week because you don’t have a car so you can’t go get your groceries or maybe take you to the Laundromat to do your laundry.”

Hayes said that Amos House will continue to provide services to the families, including counseling, assistance finding housing and crisis intervention.

The project , which has a budget so far of about $60,000, has financial support from the city – Cicilline last week gave Amos House a check for $14,300 – as well as the American Baptist Churches USA, the Rhode Island State Council of Churches and private donors.

In an interview, Cicilline noted that “there’s a record number of homeless people in this country, and the gap between rich and poor is growing wider every day, so the problem is getting worse, and there are more and more families that find themselves homeless.”

Many families are living “right on the edge,” he added, so they are just one medical emergency or one layoff away from homelessness. Building affordable housing – an effort that has dramatically increased in recent years compared to the 1990s – is crucial, Cicilline said.

The five congregations that have been matched with these families include: Community Church of Providence, Congdon Street Baptist Church, Muslim American Dawah Center of Rhode Island, New Covenant Church International and St. Sebastian Church.

The Rev. David D. Mitchell, a senior pastor at Congdon Street Baptist Church on the East Side, said he is trying to educate his congregation and let people know that their faith extends outside of the church’s walls and to help those who are in need of it.

Helping a homeless family, he said, “is something that we could really do that was simple, that we could really support, and it will really help the homeless.”

The idea of the Good Samaritan Project originated one year ago, when Cicilline spoke to John Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver, about that city’s program. Also around that time, Hayes asked Cicilline about matching up religious congregations with individuals or families.

Cicilline said he hopes that this project will eventually include every congregation in the city, and every congregation in the state.

“If everyone takes on a family or an individual, we will, over time, solve this problem of homelessness,” he said.