From Shelter to Stability
Learn About Shelter Needs
CARITAS was organized in the early 1980’s to respond to the unmet need for emergency shelter for homeless adults in the cold winter months.
CARITAS began mobilizing the local faith community to fulfill their charitable mission through sheltering and feeding adults in need during the winter months. In the mid 1990’s, CARITAS recognized that more and more families were becoming homeless and stepped in to fill the void.
Now a year-round program serving about 1,300 people annually and with the help of over 170 local congregations of various faiths, CARITAS has become the largest emergency shelter program for adults and families in the region serving people in the City of Richmond, and the counties of Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, and Goochland. At night our host congregations, who are the core strength of CARITAS, continue to provide essential, year-round emergency shelter. By day at our headquarters building, our case managers are provided an accessible and professional site to work with homeless parents and single adults. To meet the individual needs of each client, case managers help identify issues and difficulties the client is having and put together a plan of action to help overcome these obstacles. The final goal is to have the client successfully transition out of CARITAS and into a more stable lifestyle.
Clients are referred by Central Intake, the single portal of entry into the homeless services system, to our sign-in sites, located at downtown congregations. CARITAS provides bus transportation to each host site. During the winter, CARITAS operates up to five different sites simultaneously. Each congregation hosts the program for one or more weeks and shelters 28-40 individuals each evening
Within CARITAS, there are two programs: Family Focus and Single Adult.
Our shelter programs are designed to meet the unique needs of both adults and families in search of income, affordable housing, and hope during a devastating personal crisis. We seek to partner with our clients to achieve mutually agreed upon personal goals. CARITAS is the only program in our community that shelters large families, families with fathers, and families with adolescent males.