I Will Be Your Voice – Stories of Homelessness and Hope
More than 40,000 children and youth experience homelessness in Pennsylvania, posing a significant barrier to succeed in school. In partnership with Pennsylvania Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness (ECYEH), join Center for Schools and Communities staff Melissa Turnpaugh and Matthew Butensky as they interview state and national experts, homeless liaisons, service providers, and those with lived experience. These conversations will dive deeper into resources, partnerships and best practices that help these children and youth thrive in school and life. Along the way, guests will share untold stories to amplify the voices and stories of students experiencing homelessness across Pennsylvania and beyond.
I Will Be Your Voice – Stories of Homelessness and Hope
Episode 15 - Building Stability: Family Promise's Collaborative Approach
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Can a community rally together to keep families united during their toughest times? Join us for an in-depth conversation with Matt Wagner from Family Promise as we explore the often misunderstood realities of homelessness and how their community partnerships take a holistic approach to providing services. Discover their collaborative efforts with local churches for nightly accommodations and their impactful partnership with United Way of the Capital Region's Road to Success program, which has been transformative in improving employment rates, even for those with criminal histories. Hear about their approach with their partnerships for food distribution and job preparation resources, illustrating how tailored assistance can make all the difference in helping families move towards stability. You will also learn constructive ways that you can get involved and make an impact. From spreading the word on social media to volunteering for important roles like van driving or committee participation, your support can be transformative.
Read the transcript (PDF).
Meet Our Guest
Matthew Wagner is the Executive Director for Family Promise Harrisburg, which means he has the best job in the world. He gets to help his community support families and individuals at risk of experiencing homelessness, currently experiencing homelessness, or transitioning out of experiencing homelessness on their path to permanent housing. He believes in a collaborative approach that treats every person as an individual and works to help them, not just in the short-term, but also in the long-term to be able to prosper and achieve their goals.
Matthew likes to think outside the box and problem-solve, which have been invaluable in the decade he’s worked in the nonprofit world, first as a consultant, then on the communications side, before getting into fundraising. Now he’s combined all those experiences for the last almost two years as Executive Director of Family Promise Harrisburg Capital Region. In his time there he established an environment where the staff, board, and volunteers all take what they do seriously but don’t take themselves seriously leading to a team-oriented approach where we are all extended family looking out for each other and those we serve.
Resources
Welcome to our podcast. I will be your voice. Stories of homelessness and hope. I am your host, melissa Turnpaw, youth Development Coordinator with the Center for Schools and Communities.
Speaker 2And I am your co-host, Matt Butensky, Project Manager with the Center for Schools and Communities. I'm happy to be back again for another podcast episode. It's been a few episodes that Melissa's been hosting the podcast.
Speaker 2Writing solo I'm so happy to join back again for our episode today of the I Will Be your Voice podcast, and we want to welcome Matt Wagner from Family Promise to the podcast. Welcome, matt. How's your summer going? Welcome, it's been great. Hot, but great. It has been a hot summer here in Pennsylvania, yes. So we're so happy to have you and learn more about Family Promise and the great work that you do, because, as you know, we're trying to elevate stories of homelessness here in Pennsylvania, and so we are so happy to have you here, so happy to be here Awesome.
Speaker 1Yeah, so speaking of on our conversation over to the room where we record our podcast, I had asked Matt, did you walk?
Speaker 3here, or did you?
Speaker 1drive and he said it's a little too hot for walking. But just to give our audience some context, family Promise is actually a walking distance to where we're at the Center for Schools and Communities, but we haven't really been to each other's properties before Matt was saying the same project at our facility a few years back.
Speaker 2Not true. We, the Center, did a project for Martin.
Speaker 1Luther King Day a few years ago, where we helped renovate one of their spaces.
Speaker 3You all are welcome anytime.
Speaker 2Awesome, and I just checked with Matt the chalkboard wall is still there, it still lives all these years later, so I'll have to go back and check out the chalkboard wall. So yeah, we're very nearby, right here in Camp Hill, pennsylvania, so it's nice to have a neighbor and friend for the podcast today.
Speaker 1So, and being in person, we don't get that very often.
Speaker 2Virtually. Yeah, it's nice to have you here in person.
Speaker 1So awesome. So thank you for being here. We're excited to learn more about Family Promise. So can you tell our audience just about, like, your role at Family Promise and kind of the mission and vision behind the organization?
Speaker 3Yeah, so Family Promise is one of about 200 affiliates across the country, but each affiliate is independent. We each have our own board of directors, we're each responsible for our own fundraising and our own budget, and the great thing about that is that every family promise is able to kind of adapt its programming to the needs in their own community Because, let's face it, families experiencing homelessness. That looks different here in Harrisburg, pennsylvania, than it does in Rochester, new York, than it does in Topeka, kansas, than it does in California, new York, than it does in Topeka, kansas, than it does in California, right? So each affiliate is able to look at the resources and the needs in their area and kind of adapt its programming accordingly. So for us, we got started in 2011, and our focus was on providing shelter for families with children who were experiencing homelessness. We knew that most of the shelters in the area were either for men or for women and children, and the line of delineation for that was the age of 14. So if you were a parent, if you were a single mom and you had a 14-year-old son, you would potentially be at two different places if you were experiencing homelessness, if you were a married couple, an engaged couple, a dating couple and you wanted to be together. You would have to be at two different places potentially. So we felt like when you're going through one of the worst moments of your life, it's important to be able to be together.
Speaker 3So the way we did that, we have our day center, which, as you said, is located here in Camp Hill, and that's where the families will spend their day working on their goals. That can be anything from finding a job to arranging childcare, figuring out transportation all the things that they're going to need to do to be able to sustain housing once they, once they find it. And then we have a network of churches in the area that will give the families a place to stay for the night. So they have volunteers that will come pick the families up in the van. We have a 14 passenger van. They'll take the families to the church. They'll spend the night there, they'll have dinner there, and then we give them air mattresses and sheets and blankets. They'll spend the night there, They'll have dinner there, and then we give them air mattresses and sheets and blankets. They'll spend the night there and come back to the day center the next day while they're with us.
Speaker 3So that's how we got started as a shelter and then a few years ago we really started expanding our programming because we wanted to look at helping others outside of just those in our shelter helping people avoid even having to be in our shelter. So it started with a partnership with the United Way of the Capital Region. They have a program called Road to Success which is designed to eliminate the barriers to jobs that pay a family sustaining wage. So they have funds for things like child care, uniforms, work clothes, transportation, all of that kind of stuff. So we're one of the case management sites for that program. We'll do the intake, find out what the needs are and then United Way provides the funds to help them with that. So we've been in that program now for a little over three years. We have 50 some folks enrolled in that program right now and over 80% of them are working, which is awesome. And one of the great things about that program in particular is some of the employer partners for that program have are more lenient when it comes to individuals that have a criminal background. So we're often able to get them jobs that they can't get anywhere else. So that's been great.
Speaker 3And then last year we started our up programs. So we really looked at what are the barriers to obtaining and keeping permanent housing and we identified a few. One of them that we identified was the cost of moving into a new place first month rent, deposit, that kind of thing and so we started our move up program, which will help pay for that. It will also help catch people up who have just gotten a little behind on their rent or their utilities so they can avoid being evicted, because we know once you're evicted from a property, you're going to have a much more difficult time finding housing again. So we have some funds for folks in those situations. We also started our Wheels Up program for folks in those situations.
Speaker 3We also started our Wheels Up program that we wanted to help with the permanent transportation needs. So not just bus passes or Uber rides, because we know those aren't sustainable, but how do we help somebody get to and from work to and from daycare to and from the grocery store, those kind of things, on a permanent basis? So that has funds for things like getting your car fixed, going and getting driver's ed classes and getting your driver's license. Some of us used it for a down payment on a car to give them a permanent transportation solution. And then, finally, we looked at the trauma that comes along with experiencing homelessness and what can we do to to help address that.
Speaker 3And we knew we couldn't provide permanent counseling but we wanted to be a bridge until they could get into some kind of permanent counseling so we can have a contract with a mental health counselor who will meet with them virtually and talk about what their triggers are, what their challenges are, what they're experiencing, and kind of walk them through that and help them with some coping techniques and then guide them, get them into permanent counseling. Moving forward, so I like to say that we're really trying to help families at all kind of spectrum of homelessness from not even being at risk but wanting to improve your situation, to being at risk and being behind on your bills, to experiencing homelessness and needing a place to stay. My role there as the executive director, I like to say I have the best job ever. I get to work with our families, hear their stories and share their stories with the community and talk about how the community can come alongside these folks and help them achieve their goals and get into a permanent housing situation.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing too about just the demographics across the country and just the big point and picture that not every city looks the same and the service is needed, because I think sometimes it's very easy to just think, oh, it's all the same. In reality it's not, because every city versus town and suburb is going to have different organizations and community organizations to help.
Speaker 3Well, and I think too, a lot of times when somebody thinks of the homeless, they're thinking of a guy on the corner of the street with a cardboard sign right. But homelessness is so much more than that. It's folks who are staying with family or friends, folks who are living in a tent or living out of their car or paying $2,000 a month for a hotel. There's a lot of folks that need help. But don't fall into that. What we would traditionally think of somebody who's homeless.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you told us so many amazing things you're doing and one of my notes was just thinking about. You shared about all the affiliates throughout the country. Are there other Pennsylvania affiliates as well?
Speaker 3We have several across Pennsylvania. I'm not even going to try to name them all, but we have one in Pittsburgh, redding, montgomery County. We have a couple in the Philadelphia area. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2That's awesome, so I wanted to ask a little bit more about how the programs work and function and how you know referrals might be made, or how do families find your services and then how do they apply to participate, and how many families do you serve?
Speaker 3those types of details, yeah so families find out about us in any number of ways. They might do an internet search. We get a lot of referrals from some of the other shelters in the area, from schools, from school counselors, from churches. People find us any number of different ways. As far as that goes, our application process is pretty simple. We have people go on our website it's familypromisehcrorg, gplug, and there's a button right at the top that says Need Help and they click on that and they fill that out and kind of select what it is that they're looking for help with, kind of select what it is that they're looking for help with. From there that goes to our case management, our case manager and our program manager, and they review it. They'll set up a time to do a Zoom or a phone interview with them, kind of find out more about their situation and how we can help, and we take it from there.
Speaker 3Awesome, how many families are you currently serving? So we served it was about 132 families last year. We're on pace to do a little bit more than that this year. Our shelter program we can take up to three families at a time. Up to three families at a time. Like I said, we have 50-some in our Road to Success program right now, and then the rest are spread across our different up programming.
Speaker 2Okay, so your shelter program is that the program where there's the nighttime program with a local faith organization organization and then they come to you during the day right, okay okay, that's really cool yeah so I know you mentioned about different uh churches being a local resource.
Speaker 1Are there other like resources that you utilize from organizations that you can like share with our audience about different supports that the families can get other than just from the church or from you guys?
Speaker 3Yeah, we're constantly figuring out new ways to collaborate with the other service providers in the area. We're good at serving families with children who are experiencing homelessness. We're not good at distributing food that's not what we do, so we partner with the food banks in the area for that. At distributing food, that's not what we do, so we partner with the food banks in the area for that. We're not an organization that's focused on providing work clothes, so we partner with Dress for Success for that. We're always looking for opportunities to partner with other organizations in the area. As I mentioned before, we get referrals from other shelters. As I mentioned before, we get referrals from other shelters. They refer families to us. We sometimes, if a family needs longer than our program, which is a 60 to 90-day program, we will refer them to a program like Brethren Housing or Safe Harbor in Carlisle or one of those programs.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's great. And then so I know that you guys have them come to the day center. Can you kind of explain? I know you said that they work on goals, but what might be some of the goals that you and what profession is like working with them specifically?
Supporting Families Experiencing Homelessness
Speaker 3So we have a case manager that will sit down with them when they come in and kind of assess where they're at, what their situation is and what the next step should be. And for some people that's starting at the very beginning and they need their IDs and birth certificates and that kind of thing. For other people they have that, so it's finding a job or arranging child care, figuring out the transportation piece, all of that kind of stuff, all of those things that need to be in place for them to have permanent housing. So it looks different for every family. And then they meet on a weekly basis and say okay, we talked about doing this this week. Where are you at with that? What have you done? What else do we need to do? What's the next step? That kind of thing. And of course they schedule a weekly meeting, but we're talking to them. I mean, we're working in the same building with them, so we're talking to them throughout the week as well.
Speaker 1Right, and then is there like a limit on how long they can stay in the program.
Speaker 3So our program is designed to be a 60 to 90 day program and it was designed that way because prior to COVID that was the typical timeframe for somebody to obtain permanent housing. We know that that timeframe is extended since COVID. Our successful stays. Right now we're running somewhere between 100 and 110 days, just because finding affordable housing and finding a landlord to give somebody a chance is more challenging now than it's ever been.
Speaker 3This area is the second most competitive rental market in the country behind Miami Florida. So a landlord's getting anywhere from 60 to 80 applications when they put a property up for listing. So a landlord is going to look at the application from my family that may not have great credit, may have an eviction on their record or not a great tenant history or whatever the case may be, and compare that to somebody coming in to work at one of the hospitals or for another opportunity they're going to take the sure thing. So finding those landlords to give them a chance is challenging sometimes, but we've been able to find landlords that are willing to work with us and work with our families and get them into a permanent place more often than not.
Speaker 2So while the parents are at the day center, the children are at school. Sure, so are you. You coordinate their transportation to school. How are they getting to school? Do you serve multiple school districts in the area? How does that?
Speaker 3work. Yeah, so there's a law called the McKinney-Vento Act that requires their home school district to transport them while they're in shelter. So it doesn't matter what school district they come from, that school district has to provide transportation from our day center in Camp Hill to their home school while they're staying with us, and some school districts don't like that. While they're staying with us, and some school districts don't like that. But when they're reminded that it is the law and we will enforce the law, we'll get the van to the day center and get the kids where they need to go.
Speaker 2Good, good, I'm glad to hear that, and so, like we opened the podcast, I have been to your day center. Can you tell us more about your day center? I know that it is a very home-like environment, so can you tell us a little bit more about that environment and why it's like that?
Speaker 3Sure, you know, I think a lot of times when somebody thinks of a homeless shelter, they're. You know. They think of a big room with a whole bunch of bunk beds and very sterile and that kind of thing. Ours is not that. We had a bunch of kids from Milton Hershey two years ago come in and paint murals on the walls. Oh, you're a Milton Hershey guy.
Speaker 3Okay, there's always that thread of Milton Hershey guy okay they were, you know, art honor students or whatever, and they came in and did murals on the wall and it's actually kind of cool because they each took a section so you could really kind of see some of their personalities and what they painted on the walls. But anyway, so we have that, you know, down, you know, downstairs at the day center we have a kitchen so they can do their, do some of their own cooking. We have laundry there so they don't have to pay to have laundry done, shower and bath, all of that kind of, all of that kind of stuff. Downstairs too, now we have a room that is has several computer stations set up in it. So if somebody wants to take advantage of a work-from-home opportunity, they have young ones and don't want to do child care, they can set up in there and work from there or just use it to do research, find jobs, do that kind of thing, and the kids use it for homework as well.
Speaker 3So we have that all right there at the day center. And then they all have metal lockers that they keep their stuff in, keep it locked up, so it's all secure. And yeah, it's. Sometimes I call it the center ring of our three ring circus because it can be a little chaotic. Imagine you know 10 to 12 people in a building. Along with you know three or four staff people trying to work and yeah, it's a lot of fun. I've been interrupted more than once by a kid walking into my office.
Speaker 2I'm sure, I'm sure, and so with that, I know your organization is called Family Promise, so you do have a requirement that the people you serve are families. But what is your definition of a family for Family Promise?
Speaker 3So the only thing that we require is that there be a child under the age of 18. But to us, a family is a group of people who live together and love each other, is a group of people who live together and love each other, so we don't care if that family is two men and a child, two women and a child. We've had a mom. A mom had to give up her kids. Her sister adopted them and their mother was helping. So it was a grandmother, an aunt and five kids. That's a family. We've had single dads, single moms. We I think we've had just about every configuration of family that that you can imagine in our. Yeah, the time that we, that I've been there in the three years that's cool.
Speaker 2That's great to be inclusive. We talked about your shelter program. You also mentioned your I think you called it your Road to Success program. Can you tell us a little bit more about Road to Success?
Speaker 3Yeah, road to Success is a partnership with the United Way of the Capital Region.
Speaker 3So they have six case management sites throughout the area that each have a dedicated case manager that will do an intake, find out what a person's interests are, where they see themselves, and then apply that to. They have about 30-some partners, from giant food to warehouses to the hospitals that will help them find a job that pays a family sustaining wage. I think all the jobs right now are paying at least $16 an hour, which you can discuss if that's a family sustaining wage or not, but it's better than a lot of places, if that's a family sustaining wage or not, but it's better than a lot of places. So we'll help them with doing job interview skills, doing resumes, applying for the job, all that kind of stuff. And then once they get the job, we look at it and say, okay, what are the things that they're going to need to be able to keep this Childcare transportation uniforms? And we'll be able to keep this Child care transportation uniforms and we'll be able to help them with that kind of stuff.
Community Involvement Opportunities at Family Promise
Speaker 3United Way even has funds for things like down payment on a car. They have money for helping with first month rent and deposit for folks in the program and all of that. So we're kind of one of the case management sites for that program thanks.
Speaker 1Thanks for sharing about that one so, talking about different community organizations, how can people within the community get involved at family promise? I was kind of looking over your website and look, there's a lot of opportunities for involvement. Can you kind of share that with our listeners, about how they might be able to get involved at whether it's this one here in capital area or if it's anywhere in Pennsylvania?
Speaker 3Sure, Well, you know, I say you know one of the biggest things is helping us get out the word about what we do. So find our Facebook page and like us on social media, share our posts. We do a great job of sending out updates on what's going on with our families cute stories and anecdotes about things that happen at the day center interactions that we have and share those. I love coming out and speaking to groups, so I don't care if it's a Sunday school group, a knitting group, a fishing group. You put three or four people in a room and I'll come and talk about family, promise, share our family and talk about what we do. So that's another way that you can partner with us. I'd also say that we're always looking for more faith-based organizations who will provide shelter for our families.
Speaker 3You know COVID had a dramatic impact on faith-based institutions across the country. I say if a faith-based institution lost half of its volunteers through COVID, it did great. Most of them lost two-thirds to three-quarters, so it's made it difficult for a lot of them to continue providing service to the families that we serve. So we're always looking for faith-based institutions to partner with. So if you have a church that has a couple of empty Sunday school rooms that we can utilize, and you're within 30 minutes of our day center. Love to talk with you about that. And then from there we're always looking for support volunteers, people to help drive the van, people to mow, people to serve on various committees and that kind of stuff. I say that you tell me what you're good at and I'll find a way to make it help the families that we're serving.
Speaker 1That's awesome. So when these families are at the faith-based institutions, is there someone who's there overnight with them? Is it someone from your organization? Is it someone from the church? Just to kind of give more background.
Speaker 3Yeah, so some of the some of the some of them have somebody who stays with them overnight. Not all of them do. We don't require it, we leave it up to the individual institution. Some of them say you know the pastor lives next door. Something happens, you know they can be right there, they're not, not worried about it. We leave that up to them.
Speaker 2Good to know I think you might have covered some of these, but I wanted to just take another moment to talk about your prevention and intervention programs. So would you kind of encapsulate Road to Success within that program, or do you have other programs that you offer around prevention and intervention?
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean I would consider Road to Success one of those programs. But in addition to that then we have our up programming. So those programs are our move up program, which will help with first month rent and deposit back rent and utilities, those kind of things. Our Wheels Up program will help with helping get your car fixed down, payment on a car, paying for driver's ed classes and that kind of stuff. And I should say here, with both of those programs we're not just going to give you a check and a pat on the back, we want to come alongside you and be there for you in the long term. So we have you go through some financial literacy education. We use the FDIC's Money Smart program so that you can learn about managing money a little bit better. We talk to you about in the move-up program. We talk to you about what it means to be a good tenant, what does your lease mean, how do you abide by it, those kind of things. And we also ask you to participate with us in that. So we will give up to $2,000, and we ask you to reimburse us up to half of that, but we give you as long as you need to do that. I'm not, guido, I'm not going to come bust your kneecaps if you don't pay us back, but it's a way for you to pay it forward.
Speaker 3So we have those two programs and then we have our heads-up program, which is kind of the temporary bridge, mental health counseling to help with the trauma related to experiencing homelessness. And I should say we're piloting a program right now called our Grow Up program. That would help with the gap between what child care network covers in child care costs and what the daycare charges, at least for the first few months. So we're piloting that right now. We'll see how that goes and whether we can expand that moving forward. But you know we really you know we sat down last year as a board and did a strategic plan and looked at what are the barriers to obtaining and maintaining permanent housing and how do we help address those the best we can.
Speaker 2Yeah Well, you're offering a lot of really incredible programs that, as you said, are impactful for different different signs or different types of homelessness, and I think that's really cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, I agree. So if we're good, I think we're ready to wrap up our podcast session with you. Is there anything that you would like to highlight for events coming up or volunteer opportunities that the community can get involved with, or kind of just anything you think is super important for the audience to know that we might have not covered?
Speaker 3I don't know about events, but I do want to say something, especially in light of the Supreme Court decision last week. You know, as a society, I think we tend to sometimes look down on or maybe even vilify people experiencing homelessness, and my experience over the last almost three years now with these people is they are some of the most resilient, resourceful people you'll ever meet. Think of a single dad with two kids that was just trying to get by and got kicked out of his place and just needed a place to stay to keep children and youth off his back until he could get into a permanent place again. We were able to help him. Think of the single mom that had two kids and was pregnant with a third. She was with those kids 24-7, 365. If I were in that situation, I'd be in the corner in a ball rocking myself, but she just got up every day and kept plugging away. These folks are not folks that we should be looking down on or vilifying, but they're to be admired and it's just something I want everybody to think about.
Speaker 2Matt, thank you so much. We wholeheartedly agree and we are grateful for the services that you're providing the Capital Region with Family Promise. It sounds like there's so many great opportunities for families, so we hope that this episode will help to educate around this topic and also to help people learn about what is available to them our audiences across Pennsylvania and beyond. So it's great to know that there is Family Promise affiliates elsewhere in Pennsylvania and also nationally. So thank you so much for sharing about Family Promise today. We really are happy you came by.
Speaker 3My pleasure. Happy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2So with that message we are going to close our episode of I Will Be your Voice Stories of Homelessness and Hope. Again, thank you for being here today, and to learn more about Family Promise of Harrisburg Capital Region, please visit Family Promise HCR, hcr.
Speaker 3Harrisburg, capital Region.
Speaker 2Capitalregionorg. Thank you, matt, I know that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the I Will Be your Voice Stories of Homelessness and Hope podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode with Matt Wagner from Family Promise. Please check back and tune in again. Thank you.
