Letter from the President – March 2025

When it was published in 2016, I read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City  by Matthew Desmond. The book included stories of eight families who were struggling to stay housed. Yet all were evicted. Desmond followed these eight families, primarily headed by single mothers with young children. One of the families was even evicted from a trailer park on the outskirts of Milwaukee.

I’ve kept the book on my shelf and periodically I browse through it. I highly recommend it as it provides a clear picture of families working hard, yet living on the edge . . . and then falling off.

I’ve been involved with Family Promise for 35 years, so when I read the book, I had thought I knew a lot about people who were homeless. But I hadn’t truly realized why people became homeless or, more specifically, how seemingly minor issues or mistakes could all of a sudden lead to a family losing their home.

When Covid struck, Family Promise distributed nearly 50,000 lunches and 9,000 boxes of produce to people who came to St. Cecilia’s parking lot in Englewood. And every few days a woman would drive there, receive her lunch, and drive away. She drove a nicely kept, yet ten-year old car, and she was dressed like she could have been going to work at Macy’s. She stood out from most of the others who drove in or stood in line – ones who, you know, you could guess they were really in need of food – maybe even homeless.

One day a volunteer said to me, “Why are we giving that woman food? She’s dressed nicely, and has a good car. Are we sure she needs a free meal?” And I remember saying, “The only things we know about her is that she is wearing a nice dress and is driving a car. We don’t know if she has a job, or how many people she is trying to feed, or even if she is living in that car. We know nothing else about her.”

The volunteer that asked me that question was certainly not the only volunteer who was wondering as well. That was a wake-up call for me. I had pretty much assumed that only people who were homeless would stand on a line to get a free meal. But I have come to know that is not the case. But it’s getting worse as more and more people who ARE working are finding it so much more difficult to afford a place to live and provide for their basic necessities.

The New York Times recently included an article by Brian Goldstone, America is Pushing Its Workers Into Homelessness. We have come to a place where they are not on the fringes of our society, but working people . . . in fact, what is becoming more frequent is that most of these people are living, not in the poorest areas of our country, but in the more affluent locations. And, because it is getting so expensive, if they lose their jobs they may quickly lose their homes or apartments.

Goldstone points to a recent study that indicated “nearly half of people experiencing homelessness while staying in shelters, and about 40 percent of those living outdoors or in other makeshift conditions, had formal employment.” And, even that is a lowball number because it doesn’t include those who are working but who live in their cars or live doubled-up with friends or families. (By the way, you may think “Well, at least those doubling-up have a roof over their heads.” Yet there are studies showing significant adverse effects on children and adults living in such a situation.)

We have a very low unemployment rate in this country. Yet more are now homeless than ever before. By one estimate, nearly 40% of full-time workers earn less than $15 an hour – while the average wage needed to afford a two-bedroom rental home in the United States is over $32 an hour!

Where is the affordable housing? Drive anywhere and you see apartments being built. But precious few of them are affordable, not only to low-income families, but also (as Goldstone points out) to “nurses, teachers, janitors and child care providers.”

I could go on and on. And I will, next time, because Family Promise is an organization that assists these working families, to catch them before they fall into homelessness. We want you to understand more about how this can happen, and how we change the lives of those families we help.

Paul Shackford

President of the Board of Trustees