Everyone struggles at some time in their life, but no one anticipates experiencing homelessness. Fortunately, for families like Jackie’s, Family Promise in Anoka County exists to provide exactly what her family needed.  

Our mission—empowering families experiencing housing insecurity to build a foundation of lasting independence—is at the core of all we do. Family Promise in Anoka County focuses on a continuum of services for families experiencing housing insecurity; our goal is to move families from homelessness to permanent housing. We provide highly individualized, person-centered, trauma-informed care and case management to help families address barriers and set achievable goals for housing stability. Jackie is a caring mother of three children ages one, five, and 15.

Jackie values her independence and ability to care for herself and her family. But, in 2020, she found herself unemployed and pregnant. Like many families who have experienced homelessness, Jackie didn’t have the safety net of family to support her during difficult times once her grandparents passed away. She was on her own, struggling with addiction and its fallout, reluctant to ask for help. 

Jackie successfully completed a treatment program but lost her family’s permanent housing. She was living in hotels, paying with rapidly depleting savings. Her case worker with Anoka County’s Partnership for Family Success program connected her with Family Promise for shelter and other resources to help her family regain independence and stability. As Jackie states, “This was a life-changing event.”

Family Promise gave Jackie a foundation from which to move forward. Now she had the security of a roof over her head without depleting her savings and access to many family support resources. Although Jackie’s family was in the shelter program during the pandemic and didn’t have the full volunteer and hospitality experience Family Promise typically offers, Jackie still felt the strong support of the Family Promise community.

Jackie worked with a volunteer budget mentor, and she shared that budgeting is one of the most valuable skills she learned from Family Promise. Her budget mentor helped her create a spreadsheet of her income and expenses, encouraging Jackie to “put it all down,” even though she didn’t want to see it. Putting it all down helped her learn new ways to save money and, Jackie says, made saving “totally painless.” Housing Stabilization Case Manager Sue Peterson respects and praises Jackie’s budgeting and money management skills saying she took this learning to heart and left shelter with money in the bank, which is rare.

Jackie was excited when she received a housing voucher and looked forward to the move. Two weeks prior to the scheduled move, however, funding for the voucher was cancelled. For any family on the precipice of success, a setback like this could easily halt progress and maybe even cause a slight regression. Jackie, however, persevered and proved resilient, not giving up on herself or her family.  As she said, “Family Promise went into overdrive for me looking for housing.” Ultimately, Family Promise found her family an apartment with affordable, income-based rent; they moved into their new home in June 2021. At 251 days, Jackie and her children were the longest-enrolled family in the shelter program.

Jackie attends a weekly support group, led by a volunteer mental health professional, where she continues to learn new ways to take care of herself and her family and continues work with her budget mentor. The semimonthly Family Promise Breaking Barriers classes connect her to services such as mental health and car repair. She says that learning to let people into her life, with the support of Family Promise, has been a valuable lesson over the past year.

We continue to work with this family to connect them to services buttressing housing stability. Thanks to the support of our community, donors who believe in our mission, and dedicated staff, we continue serving families experiencing housing insecurity and empowering them to achieve lasting independence.  

Jackie is only one success story from this past year. Despite the pandemic, we continue to develop new programs and resources and foster partnerships to help families with their needs. We celebrate Jackie’s success as well as the success of all the other families who have achieved housing stability through the support of Family Promise in Anoka County. *Jackie’s name has been changed to preserve the privacy of her family and their personal experiences.