Catherin Cox, along with her husband and two and a half year old twins lived with Cox’s mother and knew they wanted to be in a place on their own. Friday, the family moved into a permanent home thanks to Family Promise of Santa Rosa County and host churches, such as First Baptist Church of Milton. She said they helped her connect to resources and she’s in the process of getting a job at Tom Thumb. Her husband is an electrician. “They’ve been wonderful. They help a lot of people,” she said. Shane Nation, Family Promise director for SRC said Cox and her family are the fourth family this year to graduate from the Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN) into permanent housing.
The mission of Family Promise of Santa Rosa is “to move children and their families from crisis to self-sufficiency by providing temporary housing and support services.” The IHN is temporary housing. This is where FBC of Milton is involved. According to Nation, Family Promise partners with churches for one week at a time so a homeless family has a place to sleep at night while they work with FP staff to get back on their feet again.
Nation said each of the six host churches in the county take in a family for one week every quarter. The idea, he said, is so families have a place to stay but are not there long enough to get too comfortable. Families spend the day at the Day Center and go back to the church from 5:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.
First Baptist Church Minister of Education Gary Nichols said his church tries to have hot meals in the evenings and church volunteers help with tutoring. Dr. David Spencer, senior pastor, said the church is constantly searching for volunteers. Nation noted military members tend to make the best volunteers, but unfortunately their service often calls them away before long. While First Baptist wants volunteers to help serve meals and just be with these families in crisis, the hardest volunteers to find are those who could stay overnight until the family leaves in the morning. Nation said, “The volunteers at the church provide encouragement.” He said sometimes they can even find work for clients. “The church is able to do missions, to show the love of Christ in a physical way.”
Nation said, at the Day Center, he plays the role of the principal, pushing clients to budget every penny, work hard at finding a job, and coping with stressful situations at work so clients can hold a job. He said “We teach budgeting and financial management…We require budgeting for food stamps and do meal planning.” He added clients have to budget every pay check and during tax season, he asks families to put 50 percent into savings.
Nation also said a client may get excited about finding available work in Gulf Breeze, but he’ll then ask how the client plans on getting there, if the client doesn’t have transportation. “We talk through realistic goals.”
Family Promise also helps clients handle criminal obligations, if they have court appointments or need to meet with probation officers. “We want them to be compliant,” Nation said.
Public transportation would be a great aid to homeless families, according to Nation since many have no vehicle and have to rely on walking or biking, which greatly limits how far they can travel for work. Even if Family Promise provided transportation, Nation said once a family gets into housing and out of the program, they would be without a means of transportation again.
In addition to First Baptist Church of Milton, Nation said the other host churches are First Baptist Church of Bagdad, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Pine Terrace Baptist, and the First United Methodist Church of Milton. As these are only six churches, and each only hosts once every 12 weeks, this leaves a gap more churches need to fill. Currently, Nation said Family Promise of Santa Rosa County turns the Day Center into a kind of dormitory, but he said the nonprofit has found the church hosting system yields the best results. “The size of the church doesn’t matter,” Nation said. First Baptist Church of Bagdad, Nation said, has the number of members in its entire church as Family Promise volunteers at First Baptist Church of Milton. The FBC of Bagdad, he said, works with First United Methodist Church to serve the families. “Some are support churches,” he said, who help with meals or provide overnight volunteers “to get to know the families.”
Any church or individuals interested in getting involved with Family Promise should call 623-5300 or email familypromise123@bellsouth.net.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Homeless families have shelter in storm