From Shelter to Stability
Our Story
CARITAS began as an all-volunteer effort called "Winter Cots" in the early eighties as a response to a dramatic increase of people on the street and in need of shelter caused by a convergence of social issues, including the large scale discharge of mental health patients into the general community, the razing of low-rent downtown hotels, an increase in heroin and cocaine use, and a stuttering economy. Seeking guidance from Emergency Shelter, Inc., the faith community opened the doors of its downtown churches and synagogues in the evenings to offer shelter, cots, and blankets to those in need for several weeks at a time.
In 1987, this effort was formalized with the incorporation of CARITAS. The agency created a governing board and added paid staff in order to provide support for volunteers and overnight guests. Soon after, paid overnight shelter staff positions were added, along with the expectation for providing meals for overnight guests.
Eventually, the breadth of congregations that desired to be involved spread well beyond the downtown area to include the outer limits of Richmond City and the surrounding counties. Several congregations hosted the program simultaneously, which was still restricted to the coldest months of the calendar year. However, as federal funding streams moved away from supporting emergency shelter beds and began to focus instead on funding transitional housing programs, many of the emergency shelter beds vanished from the system, creating a gap in services. In response to that need, CARITAS went through a strategic planning process and ultimately decided to become a year-round shelter. It also grew in response to the needs of its guests and began offering services such as showers and laundry.
CARITAS created the Family Focus program in 1996 with the help of a donated building on the campus of St. Joseph's Villa, thus filling an alarming gap in the shelter system by becoming the only shelter program in our community to shelter large families, families with fathers, and adolescent males. Congregational volunteers brought dinner in the evening to those staying in the program. In 1998, two downtown congregations agreed to provide a desperately needed day shelter space for these families – Grace & Holy Trinity during the week and Centenary United Methodist Church on the weekends. Soon after, Centenary offered to house families during the day, seven days a week.
Now CARITAS was ready to move to the next level of service: opening its doors year-round. The Family Focus Program achieved this goal in 2000; the Single Adult program followed in 2003. That same year, case management was added to both programs, allowing all willing guests of CARITAS the opportunity to meet individually with a case manager to work through the legal, medical, psychological, and financial obstacles standing between themselves and self-sufficiency.
Now it was time for CARITAS to find a permanent home to call its own. In August 2006, CARITAS moved into its beautiful new office building in northside Richmond, where today it houses its administrative offices, case management offices, and its Family Focus daysite - a consolidation that has led to better communication, collaboration, and streamlining of services while at the same time meeting a critical need to provide a clean, safe place for young families during the day.
This home of our own allowed us to help create homes for others. In September 2008, CARITAS acquired the furniture bank operations from Embrace Richmond, founded by Wendy McCaig, and leased a large warehouse in southside Richmond to become the premiere provider of free household goods and furnishings to individuals and families who are exiting homeless shelters and crisis-intervention programs. Embrace Richmond continues on as a separate entity and important partner. Staffing for the furniture bank is provided through a partnership with The Healing Place, a 12-step residential recovery program for homeless men in southside Richmond.
Through the faith and commitment of many servant volunteers, paid staff, community and corporate partners, and financial supporters, much good has happened since CARITAS's humble beginnings as Winter Cots. CARITAS has served many people in need and has brought together thousands of members in our community that might otherwise continued to live estranged from one another spiritually, geographically, socially, and economically. And the results of these dedicated workers are remarkable: at the conclusion of fiscal 2009-2010, more than 73% of CARITAS's single adults receiving case management services and over 89% of its Family Focus clients successfully transitioned out of our emergency shelter program.
We remain confident that CARITAS will continue to evolve and improve as people of faith partner with people in crisis for the betterment of one another.