Area churches help homeless through Family Promise program

There are more than three dozen shelters and organizations in the greater Birmingham area aimed at housing and aiding the local homeless population.

But only a handful of them are able to keep families together.

Many are only able to take certain demographics or aren’t designed for family units in crisis.

Family Promise, however, is designed exactly for that.

Every night, in Birmingham as well as around the country, families with nowhere else to turn are welcomed into churches and synagogues for a hot meal and a safe place to stay together.

The national organization has its roots in New Jersey. It began in the 1980s when founder Karen Olson realized families in her community were facing homelessness.

In Birmingham, the organization came out of the Birmingham Hospitality Network, founded in 1998.

Many of those who founded the organization were members of the Genesis Class at Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church. Today, VHUMC is one of 15 host congregations that welcome families into its facilities for a week every few months.

Birmingham Family Promise Executive Director and social worker Rana Cowan said she has found many people don’t think about families being homeless.

“Our model is different than a typical shelter,” she said, explaining what makes Family Promise unique. “Our population tends to not be what we in the business call the ‘chronic population.’ Typically, families don’t fall into that chronic population primarily because there’s nowhere for them to go.”

Rather, she said, these families find themselves “situationally” homeless, just a few steps behind due to something like a death in the family, a loss of a job or a serious tragedy.

Cowan said families come to her in a variety of ways, often after reaching out to other homeless shelters or programs throughout the city, and they go through an extensive screening process before being placed in the program.

At any given time, the program can care for up to four families or up to 14 people.

While with Family Promise, Cowan said families are able to have enough stability to get moving in the right direction again. Children are able to continue going to school while she works with parents to secure a job, understand and form a working budget and use other support services across the city. The hope, she said, is to keep the families from falling even further behind, or “robbing Peter to pay Paul” and engaging with predatory lending agencies.

“It’s a vicious cycle, so what we hope to do is provide them with a safe place where they’re not having to worry about where they’re going to sleep at night, whether they’re going to be able to feed their children. To regroup. Set some goals,” she said.

But none of that would be possible without the 15 host congregations and four support congregations.

“They may not be able to fix everything that’s wrong, but they can sure make a casserole,” Cowan said, chuckling.

Michelle Urban has been involved with the program off and on since the early days of the Birmingham Hospitality Network as a member of the Genesis Class.

Over the years, Urban said she has been involved with everything from helping organize volunteers to just sitting and talking with mothers as they try to get laundry done in VHUMC’s Lighthouse facility.

“You just take care of them, for just a few hours,” she said.

Urban and volunteers across the city give their time as hosts, providing meals, packing lunches, playing with children and just being a friendly face.

“It really is a very, very worthwhile program,” she said.

Fellow VHUMC volunteer Rob Armstrong said he got involved when he and his late wife were looking for a way to volunteer with their two sons in an effort to give back to the community that had supported his family during his wife’s battle with cancer.

“Everybody needs a hand now and then,” he said. 

“We’ve been blessed with being a part of this community through some difficult times,” he said, saying that he wants to pass along the message of hope and support to others he and his family received.

Cowan said Family Promise volunteers always find a way to welcome guests, no matter the time of year or what is going on.

“They figure it out,” she said. “The religious community in Birmingham, in my opinion, is just amazing.”

Both Cowan and Urban said they think there are misconceptions about the homeless population, but that Family Promise helps both the people it serves as well as those who volunteer.

“It is very important, not just to them, but to us,” Urban said.

To get involved, those interested in volunteering should visit familypromisebham.org for information about host congregations and Family Promise’s two annual fundraisers.