‘If you have a little extra, give a little extra’
Pasadena homeless shelter for women and their children reports a critical need for donations
When there’s a need, the simplest things really do make a difference.
At Sarah’s House, a shelter in Pasadena for homeless women and their children, donations have decreased dramatically to the facility and to the food pantry it offers to aid struggling families in the community, while the need has doubled. Cleaning supplies are scarce.
The facility continues to fill the needs of its clients, but COVID-related challenges remain an obstacle to daily operations, according to program manager Veronica Rodriguez.
Because the facility relies on donations of food and clothing from the community, that supply has also taken a hit due to visitation restrictions.
“We’re trying to keep the public from coming in and keeping the amount of traffic to a minimum,” Rodriguez said. “We’re unhappy that we have to limit things, but we have to right now for everyone’s safety.”
Holiday donations didn’t come in as strong as in previous years.
The facility could use some cleaning supplies and quality disposable masks.
People can call 713-475-1480 or message contact@sarahshouse.org to schedule a dropoff time for donations, which are typically taken between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
“We’re sanitizing the shelter on a regular basis, so that’s one our biggest need, and we know that those are items that are hard to find,” she said.
Masks, preferably disposable rather than cloth, are a big need, as the facility goes through between 10 and a dozen daily.
Water and meat have always been a need at Sarah’s House.
The organization gives out about 50 food packages to residents neighborhoods near the facility.
“Many of them are living paycheck to paycheck and don’t have access to resources,” Rodriguez said.
These packages are prepared to make a few meals: hamburger meat and chicken, canned meats and vegetables and other nonperishables like pasta and rice. Those items can go along way during the week for a struggling family, Rodriguez said.
Sarah’s House is a congregated facility, one that offers shelter to women and children in situations of temporary homelessness. An emergency stay averages 21 days.
According to Rodriguez, the facility has continued its COVID-related practices such as keeping its occupancy as low as possible to prevent outbreaks and limiting social interaction between clients who aren’t in the same family. Sarah’s House has also designated a room to quarantine and conduct COVID tests on a regular basis. Masks are required in common places 24/7.
While the process of taking families in has resumed to the level before the pandemic, restrictions are still a necessity, Rodriguez said.
“We still trying to limit how many families (we take in) because we ran into the issue of having to quarantine families after an outbreak a few months ago, and we were able to contain it to one family,” Rodriguez said. “We’re trying to be diligent.”
The shelter now has 16 occupants, including children, and six staff members work on a rotation schedule.
“During the pandemic, our staff members have had 12-hour shifts and have kept us open,” Rodriguez said. “They take a risk every time we come to work.”
Sarah’s House is the only live-in homeless facility in the area between Webster and La Porte, and calls come in daily. It is difficult for the facility, Rodriguez said, to quantify whether more families are homeless than before the pandemic.
“We get calls daily and conduct surveys of how high the needs are, but to be honest we’ve always had daily calls, so it’s hard to tell (if there has been an increase in contact from homeless women),” she said.
The causes, reasons and circumstances behind a woman finding herself without a stable home are varied, and more common and ordinary than most of the public realizes.
“One injury, one sickness or bad circumstance is all it takes to end up homeless,” Rodriguez said.
When that public is faced with hardships and uncertainties of its own, Rodriguez said, it’s hard not to worry that Sarah’s House and other facilities like it will continue to feel the hit from lost or diminished resources.
In addition to its food pantry and other supplies, the decrease in holiday donations was another signal that times are harder everywhere, said Rodriguez, but the need to appeal to the community’s spirit of generosity is still a vital resource to Sarah’s House’s ability to keep its doors open.
“If you have a little extra, give a little extra,” she said.