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PRESS RELEASE

Homeless Children Home for the Holidays

SafeHome Philadelphia helps 60 homeless families Be Home For The Holidays

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- SafeHome Philadelphia is a program created by the Philadelphia Committee to End Homelessness. Since its inception in 2005, it has helped 161 children move from condemned houses and abandoned buildings, as well as other unsafe living conditions, into safe, affordable homes. The organization has helped 60 families altogether, 20 of whom have moved into homes in the months leading up to Christmas. In addition to providing families with homes, SafeHome will provide holiday gifts through a partnership with Toys for Tots, as well as furniture and household supplies.

SafeHome locates affordable rental housing within the community and helps with the upfront costs of moving, providing last month's rent and security deposit, while the family pays first month's rent. After contacting SafeHome, families are able to move, on average, in five weeks, and most have a choice of housing.

"There is affordable housing out there," SafeHome's Housing Advocate, Ruth Holland says, "people just have to look for it."

Once families are housed, SafeHome partners with them, connecting them to any needed services, such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which helps with utility bills, NSP, a student-run job-training and education program, and 11th Street Health Services, a program run by Drexel University that provides psychiatric care and counseling as well as cooking and parenting classes. SafeHome also visits families a minimum of once every two weeks for at least a year, helping to build stability.

SafeHome uses the nationally acclaimed Housing First strategy, which has proven successful in numerous cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Unlike Philadelphia's current Continuum of Care system, in which homeless people often wait up to two years for permanent housing, Housing First programs place people in homes as quickly as possible and then link them to needed services.

The program has achieved an 85% success rate, and the families whom the organization has helped are making great strides towards stability. When Ebony Myers contacted SafeHome, she was struggling to make ends meet as a waitress in a diner, while living in a small, one-room apartment where her son was burned by exposed hot water pipes and refrigerators blocked the narrow hallways, creating a fire hazard and preventing any means of safe escape. Now, just two years later, she's living in a safe, affordable home in West Philadelphia. She has a degree in computer technology from DeVry University, and she's working in a law firm.

Phyllis Ryan Jackson, Executive Director of SafeHome Philadelphia, has seen firsthand the difference a home makes: "I am amazed at the power of getting and having a home. Just over a month ago, I met a sad young woman who was so worn down by her life that I presumed we would be deeply involved in helping her stabilize her family. I was wrong. She is simply soaring."

SafeHome Philadelphia is located at 802 North Carlisle Street. It was established under the direction of Ms. Ryan Jackson, who is also the executive director of the Philadelphia Committee to End Homelessness, which became a nonprofit organization in 1982. SafeHome is funded by private donors and foundations and is working to achieve its mission of ending family homelessness in Philadelphia.

Source: SafeHome Philadelphia

CONTACT: Kathleen Lewis, Communications Director of SafeHome
Philadelphia, +1-267-259-9651

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