Building Support for Two Generations

Everything Hinges on Stable Housing

by Dr. Carolyn Graham

In 2007, The Mary Elizabeth House Inc, began its critical mission of supporting the healthy development of single parent women and their children. We learned early on that success means  helping two generations—mothers and children, and that we would continually rely on the support of individuals and businesses in our community, to accomplish our goal.  

Conditions for children in the child welfare system at the time were dire, in the District of Columbia and across the country. Studies painted a bleak picture of young people aging out of the foster care system. Many would not graduate high school and four in ten would become parents. Twenty-five percent endured some period of homelessness, one in ten females had spent time in prison and two-thirds of those aging out of foster care, were unable to maintain employment for a year. Moreover, The Child Welfare League of America reported in February of 2007 that three in twenty of the nation’s homeless adults had reported a foster care history.

We hosted focus groups of young parents still in the child welfare system. The sessions helped us to understand the young women’s thoughts and aspirations and the support they needed to build the bridge between where they were and where they wanted to be when they aged-out of the child welfare system. Most of their living arrangements in the city and surrounding suburbs, offered very little privacy. City apartments were cramped units, shared with other young mothers and their babies. In the suburban placements, they lived in foster parent homes that offered little inclusion or guidance for their development.  

The discussions firmly established the need for stable housing and a safe learning environment for children, as single parents worked or went to school, as our top priorities.  

We identified two poorly performing pieces of property that, when renovated, would serve as housing for the young women and their children. The Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) and M & T Bank purchased the two apartment buildings at a cost of $2.7 Million, because the Ministry lacked adequate funding. LISC and M&T Bank held the property until 2009 while the Ministry assembled the remaining funding. 

By 2010, the Mary Elizabeth House had secured $7Million dollars to purchase and renovate the property, which took eighteen months to complete. At the end of the building process, 27 housing units with two-bedrooms, living/dining room, bath, and kitchen and an early learning center for infants and toddlers had been created. In the Mary Elizabeth House, Inc. community, families would have their own two-bedroom apartment, fully furnished with everything one needed to start a new course in life.

The Ministry’s decision to embark on our mission by designing stable housing and an environment where young, single mothers and their children could live and learn during and after aging-out of foster care, was the right one. Engaging the support of individuals and businesses in our community is the key to eliminating poverty two generations at a time.