Newest family shelter in Daytona off to good start
Open for just two months, the new Hope Place family shelter in Daytona Beach is already proving to be the difference between catastrophe and a chance to live a happy, stable life.
The first couple to move into the shelter carved out of a 57-year-old elementary school was lugging chronic health problems, a history of living in motels and one lowwage, part-time job to support them and their two children.
A young homeless couple with two toddlers showed up the day after the mother gave birth to their third child. A single father who had been living in a car for the past year with his 8-year-old daughter has also taken refuge at the new shelter north of LPGA Boulevard off Derbyshire Road.
They’re some of the pioneers of the comprehensive assistance center that’s been six years in the making. More than 100 people have moved in so far, getting close to the halfway point of the 250 or so who will soon be living there on any given day.
“It’s going really well,” said Buck James, the shelter’s executive director. “We’re just adding families until we get to capacity.”
If not for Hope Place, he has no idea where those families in crisis would have landed. Now eight weeks into the shelter’s existence, six families have already stabilized enough to move into places of their own.
Other shelter residents are also heading toward independent living, securing jobs and paying a small amount of rent to stay in one of the complex’s nine apartments that are much larger and better equipped than the rest of the emergency housing units there. Three Daytona State College students who needed a roof over their heads for a while also have been housed.
“We’re getting some good outcomes,” said Anne Evans, chairman of the Halifax Urban Ministries board. “We had a job fair at the shelter last weekend, and several people found jobs. We’ll do everything and anything to make sure people find a job.”
Hope Place is run and owned by Halifax Urban Ministries, and it’s a dramatic expansion and improvement over the nonprofit agency’s now re-purposed family shelter. Until last month, the agency had run a family shelter for more than 10 years in a small, aging complex one block off of Ridgewood Avenue in downtown Daytona Beach.
The families living in that former family shelter were relocated to Hope Place a few weeks ago. Halifax Urban Ministries is going to continue using those downtown buildings near North Street for homeless veterans and possibly people living on the streets who have serious medical problems. The agency’s leaders are hopeful that next month they’ll be accepted into a federal grant program that will help them assist veterans.
The nonprofit also will continue to offer free meals, clothes, showers, washing machines and mail service at the downtown site.
The old family shelter had 96 beds, a third of the 300 at Hope Place. The new 55,000-square-foot assistance center also has several new amenities: onsite childcare for kids up to age 12; plenty of outdoor space for kids to play on the 14.5-acre property; a security gate encircling the complex of onestory buildings; a new library building slated to open by the end of the year and on-site counseling for proper parenting, anger management and mental health issues.
It has nine fully furnished and equipped apartments, 32 beds in dorm-style rooms for teenagers and young 20-somethings on their own, and 232 emergency shelter beds.
The offerings at Hope Place, which is staffed around the clock, were purposely designed to be comprehensive.
“That’s the only way this is going to work,” Evans said.
“We had a job fair at the shelter last weekend, and several people found jobs. We’ll do everything and anything to make sure people find a job.” Anne Evans, chairman of the Halifax Urban Ministries board