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Homes for the Homeless (HFH) is the nation's largest provider of residential, education and employment training centers—serving over 630 homeless families and over 1,200 homeless children each day at five separate sites across New York City. Dubbed American Family Inns, these sites function as communities of opportunity, carefully integrating a network of on-site education, employment and family support services that address the multiple causes of homelessness.
HFH is dedicated to reducing homelessness and poverty by providing families with the education and training that will enable them to build independent lives. The first step in this effort is to recognize that homelessness today is not simply a housing issue, but instead is an education issue and a children's issue. Families on welfare, usually headed by young single mothers with two children, make up the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Homeless children, already twice as likely to repeat a grade and four times as likely to drop out of school as their non-homeless peers, are likely to continue the cycle of poverty and homelessness when they grow up if they do not receive appropriate services and support.
The network of services within an American Family Inn is designed to assist parents and children overcome these obstacles to long-term stability. Each Inn hosts a virtual "main street," or primary public space, off of which there are a number of workshop rooms, classrooms, computer labs, and daycare areas. A mother walks down the hall to drop her child off in daycare while attending GED class and later picks her child up after finishing her internship in the afternoon. Just like in any community, you see children catching the school bus in the morning and getting dropped off in the afternoon, parents going to work either on or off site, doctors and nurses from the on-site clinic walking down the hall, teachers preparing lessons and activities for the after-school play, assistant teachers organizing the library, young children lining up to go outside to the playground, professionals making presentations and leading discussions in group sessions, and computer trainings and GED testing taking place. All of this is under one roof, the roof of an American Family Inn, a community of opportunity. At the end of a family's time here, parents are more connected to their children, children are more connected to their parents, parents are more connected to resources, and the family is on a path of permanent independence.
You can learn more about HFH by going to http://www.homesforthehomeless.com
