SECURE SAFE HOUSING
Emergency Shelter
For emergency services or case management, please call 211 or from cell phones, call 414.773.0211.
As part of a community wide effort to end homelessness, the Cathedral Center offers emergency shelter for up to 28 individual women and 8 families with children each night, as well as additional overflow beds during extreme weather or unusual need.
Our services offer a clean, welcoming environment and provides compassionate care to those experiencing immediate homelessness and unsafe housing. Cathedral Center’s emergency shelter program envisions a community in which no woman or family with children is ever forced to sleep outside or live in fear when faced with a housing crisis. Utilizing strength and efficacy based models of service delivery, our emergency shelter program strives to ensure that the basic needs of women and families with children are provided for, while engaging with guests to establish and achieve plans to address immediate barriers to safe housing and health.
On a typical day:
- Guests begin their day with breakfast and are given a bagged lunch to take with them or are invited to enjoy a hot midday meal via the Open Door Café located right next door, offered by Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist parish.
- All guests create their own strategic plan, an Individualized Plan for Independence – focusing on goals to secure safe housing, increase income and improve health & well-being. We will help you identify and remove barriers and build on strengths to support your safe exit from shelter as soon as possible.
- Guests meet with their case manager at least weekly, attend to tasks related to their individual goals and may participate in workshops specific to employment, or other educational and group activities. It is important for guests to let case managers know what they need, in order to ensure we can access the most appropriate resources to assist guests on their journey back to safe housing.
- This is a 30 day emergency shelter, with opportunities to extend stays up to a maximum of 90 days.
- We ask guests to check in by 7 p.m., unless a work schedule is provided. Evening meals are provided by our Hospitality Volunteers and community partners each night. Until on site volunteers are able to be welcomed back safely, meals are served by our Guest Support Staff in shelter. After dinner, guests assist with completing chores, getting children ready for bed, take showers or do laundry and can take advantage of some quiet time before lights go off for the night.
Day services include:
- Mental & physical health assessments and referrals
- Case management support
- Educational & group activities that enable our guests to gain life skills and build upon existing skills needed to live independently
OUTCOMES:
17,621
nights of emergency shelter were provided in 2021.
Providing basic needs and a safe, welcoming environment to:
240
women
77
families with...
103
Adult Men &
Women and...
195
Children
who were helped to avoid the need to sleep outside or other unsafe situations.