"Shelters are an unacceptable form of permanent housing"
- hopeFound Value
People Housed:
(2006 - present)
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Since 2006, without having built any housing ourselves, our dedicated staff has placed 510 clients into housing. We continually track our progress for housing and will continue to share it with our community of supporters.
Finding Hope: Housing
Paula looks around the office of hopeFound’s Housing Program in downtown Boston and says, “I wouldn’t be where I am today without these people. They helped me so much in every way.”
Now in her 50s, Paula was raised in a rural town in southern Massachusetts. In her youth, she became addicted to drugs – and then, as a young mother, she turned to alcohol. Decades of drinking eroded her relationships with her son, her daughter, and her extended family, leading her to move to Boston once her children were grown.
“I was just screwed up,” she says now. Lacking any regular source of income and a family support structure, she ended up homeless, living on the streets and in shelters. Only after she became seriously ill did she gain the will to change.
The process was slow, with many small steps along the way. Paula received medical care for her illness. She entered treatment for recovery for alcoholism. And then she began to imagine a new life for herself in permanent housing.
Paula’s health care provider referred her to hopeFound’s housing program in downtown Boston. hopeFound’s staff helped her assemble documents, fill out forms and navigate two bureaucracies to successfully receive SSI benefits and secure a Section 8 housing subsidy. hopeFound also provided counseling and ongoing support throughout the process.
Today, Paula is living in her own apartment in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston. She has placed herself on the waiting list for a plot in the Fenway’s Victory Gardens, but her personal victory over homelessness has already been won.
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