Case Statement

for

We Are Called

The Campaign for Community Renewal

For the past 148 years, the people of St. Vincent's Parish from every walk of life have served their neighbors in Germantown. The parish's presence is a symbol of hope and empowerment in an area of economic and social distress, where more than 33% of households report an income of less than $15,000, 24% of people are living below the poverty level, and roughly one third of adults over 25 do not have a high school diploma.

In 1851, St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church opened its doors to a mix of Germantown's wealthy merchants and working poor. The Vincentian Community of Priests and Brothers has served the parish since its inception. Formally known as the Congregation of the Mission and founded by a 17^th century priest, St. Vincent de Paul, the Vincentians work to create partnerships among religious organizations, government, educators, and the poor themselves. The Parish has always worked closely with its neighbors of every race and creed.

While the Vincentians' mission has not changed in over four centuries, their services must, as they strive to meet current community needs. And the needs in Germantown have changed drastically over time.

While there is great poverty in Germantown, there is also a stability that other depressed neighborhoods lack. Many of its residents have been there for 70 years and the area's elegant, single homes still attract young professionals. Its Quaker heritage left a strong history of serving the poor and its housing stock, largely built before the Depression, is so well constructed that it has withstood many years of neglect. These factors greatly enhance the renewal of both houses and lives.

Throughout shifts in economy and population, the people of St. Vincent's Parish have supported the larger Germantown community. Today, it is a 1200-member congregation working with community volunteers of all races and faiths to help put the homeless back on their feet, provide 27,000 hot meals a year, shelter children after school, and dispense vital health services. Despite the recipients' extreme poverty and often dire circumstances, the St. Vincent's family--both parishioners and their collaborators-- and those they serve meet on common ground. Respect for the dignity of the individual -- a hallmark of the Judeo-Christian tradition, marks their efforts as they minister to life's most basic needs: food, shelter and the human touch.

Many of these activities are done from the St. Vincent's Parish Hall, a spiritual center that makes the Vincentian mission a reality. But the programs that sustain the community cannot be maintained or fulfill greater needs without a stronger base of support, and the Hall that houses them is in imminent danger of collapse.

We are seeking $5 million to restore the Hall and endow its future as a community center. Without this help, the vital programs and services will cease to exist.

Through its varied programs and alliances, the people of St. Vincent's give witness to the truism that there are no simple solutions to the problems that plague our communities. They remind us that the measure of any society is how well it provides for those who cannot provide for themselves.

Homelessness is not a condition that happens overnight. It is a process, which often starts with personal rejection and moves to depression and withdrawal. There are no quick solutions and the way back is often littered with starts and stops. But the first step is clean, safe, affordable housing and that is the basic block on which Inn Dwelling builds its continuum of programs.

An independent, 501 (C) 3 non-profit organization, Inn Dwelling stabilizes and guides families toward increasing self-sufficiency by providing transitional housing and life skills. It helps homeless families eventually become stable homeowners, taxpayers and strong community members.

Inn Dwelling is unique among transitional housing programs because it places families in single family houses they can rent for nominal sums. The program has purchased 25 houses in Germantown, which they rehabbed using donated labor from 43 volunteers. Inn Dwelling renovates houses for about $12,000 per home, one-tenth the cost of most government or private rehabilitation efforts. The tenants are mostly women, single parents with several children, who are homeless in many non-traditional senses. They come out of difficult situations and are often living in crowded, cramped conditions with friends or relatives. Inn Dwelling's houses represent an estimated 10 percent of the city's long-term transitional housing units available in Philadelphia.

"Our volunteers do most of the work," says Brother Al Smith, Inn Dwelling's founder and director. "We have never borrowed any money to buy or renovate houses. We want to give people a chance, we don't want them to be dependent for the rest of their lives."

A secondary goal of Inn Dwelling is to rebuild Germantown's decaying neighborhoods. "We buy and renovate houses within a couple blocks of each other," says Brother Al. "We believe in the importance of neighborhoods and you need homeowners to bring a neighborhood back."

All available data show that families suffering an episode of homelessness need approximately 24 months of post-shelter follow up and support. Inn Dwelling allows each family up to three years residence in one of its homes. Because homelessness is the final symptom, not the underlying problem, Inn Dwelling also addresses a range of issues during the three-year period to equip families for the transition to permanent housing.

Inn Dwelling participants access an impressive array of programs and classes designed to foster independence. Some have been so successful they have been opened to other local residents. They include vocational training, GED courses, debt management seminars, parenting seminars, and after school day care.

Participants help design and manage the program, serve on its Advisory Council, and contribute individual skills where appropriate. Inn Dwelling relies on donations from the community and has a solid track record of attracting foundation funding. It manages 25 properties and a host of social service programs with one unpaid director, one administrator and scores of volunteers. While it receives in-kind donations of materials and household goods, much has to be purchased. All of this is accomplished on a budget of about $200,000 a year.

"I admire the mothers with children who are up at the crack of dawn and work so hard just to survive. Once you have reached the bottom, the distance you have to travel just to get to sustainability is immense. They're really out on their own and have to fight the system every day. Some are resourceful, creative, and resilient; they can be downright amazing. Throughout it all they have a sense of God--their spirituality is real. One guest said to me, 'When I am here, the Devil is silent.' "

While Inn Dwelling works to change the facts on the ground, another group of volunteers ministers to the poor where they live.

Every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, hundreds of men and women who will not fit neatly into 'welfare to work' programs walk through the doors of St. Vincent's Hall. Hidden in poverty's deepest crevices and carrying all of their belongings on their back, some have addictive behaviors, no support system, and no permanent place to live. Some are elderly residents of nearby boarding homes whose monthly income cannot stretch far enough to provide three meals a day. Others are victims of mental illness and chronic health problems.

"Face to Face" provides an avenue for some of St. Vincent's outreach to the most disenfranchised members of the community. An independent, non-sectarian effort, Face to Face feeds the body by providing hot meals, heals the body through access to health care, feeds the soul by creating opportunities for creative expression, and empowers individuals by providing free legal services.

"We take people where they are and try to support them," said Face to Face Director Sister Eileen Smith. "For many, there will be no great success stories. No miraculous turnarounds. Much of what we do does not come from instruction, but rather, from compassion. We want to provide a sense of community."

The cornerstone of Face to Face is the Dining Room, which provides 27,000 hot meals a year, operating on Saturdays and Sundays when other alternatives are closed, serving more than 250 people each weekend.

It takes upwards of 15 volunteers a day to operate the Dining Room and they come not only from St. Vincent's but also from Quaker meetings, local synagogues, halfway houses, and schools. They also come from the neighborhood.

"I want to do this," says Bill, a Germantown resident, "because these are my folks, and this way, I can keep an eye on them--make sure they're okay." Barry, a member of the Quaker Meeting in Germantown, adds "You know what? I have never heard a guest complain about his life. It makes me think twice before complaining about mine." Kay, a 10-year volunteer, has become grateful for what she has. "By the grace of God, they are sitting and we are standing, serving them. I took it for granted that I would always have a meal. I see now that it isn't true."

The Dining Room offers a clean space and a hot meal, but it also fulfills the deeper need for human contact. It is a place where guests understand they will be treated with respect and dignity, they will find people to talk to, and people to listen. There is a battered piano in the Dining Room, which often provides a venue for impromptu performances. Something triggers a memory, and feeling the stirrings of a talent long buried, a guest rises to play. In addition to food and fellowship, the greatest gift he will receive that day is a chance, for a fleeting moment, to connect with a piece of himself.

The Dining Room has created an atmosphere of trust that has enabled Face to Face to extend its work in other vital areas.

"To be a woman in this environment is very tough; I get through to them, sometimes, with a positive statement, telling them they look very nice. It is hard to be a friend. You have to respect their privacy. A young girl came in one day, sort of muddy and roughed up. She had just been raped. I sat with her for awhile, then took her across the hall to the nurses. She refused to go to the hospital. Women have such a tough time."

Face to Face's Health Clinic provides Dining Room guests with access to basic primary care. "We concentrate on the here and now," says Melanie Gavin, administrator of the Health Clinic. "Many of our clients do have some sort of health insurance or Medicaid but get lost in the system--it is beyond their ability to navigate through it. We trouble-shoot, connect people to primary care, and provide basic services that are not available on the weekends. Often, we do one-on-one case management, and until 1997 this was a totally volunteer operation!"

Guests present with a range of problems including untreated mental illness, hypertension, diabetes, skin problems, chest pains, substance abuse, and lack of prenatal care. Working with 13 volunteer nurses, and two part-time staff, the clinic serves more than 1500 people each year, operating on Saturdays and Sundays. The free, walk-in services include: direct nursing care for minor, acute needs; drug and alcohol counseling; first aid, wound treatment; health assessment, education, evaluation, and referral.

For the 70 children who are 'campers' at Camp St. Vincent, another Face to Face service, the city environment of the Parish Hall and Center is every bit as welcoming as the Pocono Mountains.

Aged 5 to 12, the campers who attend this four-week summer program come from homes with little stability. Nearly all have encountered crime, violence or mental illness in their daily lives, and a high percentage have special education needs or learning disabilities. Despite trauma and obstacles, the children have exhibited an enormous capacity for learning and creative expression. So popular is the camp as a summer solution that all its slots are filled the day registration opens, leaving administrators scrambling to find alternative placements for the additional children.

Camp St. Vincent cultivates the intellectual, physical, and emotional potential of each camper. Daily activities include art, music, athletics and trips to local arboretums and museums. Breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack are provided.

Initially run by volunteers, the Camp received so many requests from local parents that they added a few staff on small stipends. Still, more than 30 volunteers work with paid counselors to give each child the individual attention they crave.

To keep the positive momentum going year-round, Face to Face has started the Neighborhood Art Project, an after school program which continues to develop creativity and social relationships among the neighborhood children.

In the process of working with the Dining Room guests, volunteers began to see the need for a ministry to assist with the legal and advocacy issues that often plague the poor. The Legal Clinic was stared in 1991 and now has eight volunteer lawyers and paralegals that work with Dining Room guests on issues such as veteran's benefits, boarding home conflicts, and unemployment compensation. Often counselors are able to avoid legal cases by helping people navigate through complex systems.

Funded by occasional foundation grants, donations from St. Vincent's and limited annual contributions from donors, Face to Face accomplishes all of the above with only two paid staff, a corps of dedicated volunteers, and an annual operating budget that averages about $120,000 a year.

Every day, people are struggling to make their lives better. Outreach programs in St. Vincent's Parish -- under whose auspices the programs of Inn Dwelling and Face to Face were conceived -- continue to respond creatively to peoples needs and the changing social and political climate. The impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act is ebginning to be felt. "The (client) volume is increasing; it's definitely increasing," says intake specialist Regina Wallace.

The Emergency Food Cupboard, operating five days a week and supplying several hundred families a month with non-perishable food, fills an ever growing need of families in and around the Parish Hall. Often referred by already overburdened City-run programs, The Cupboard, which operates in partnership with an ecumenical effort to assist families and individuals, works with clients to not only meet their presenting needs, but to assess undeclared ones. "I spend a good deal of time just talking to people - listening to their problems," says Parish Social Minister Mrs. Evelyn Rogers. This information is shared with other agencies in the area to promote a comprehensive, yet non-redundant effort.

The Hall also houses the Thrift Shop, staffed entirely by volunteers who sort, price, and sell at low cost clothing, bedding, and other household goods. For some homeless men and women, the Thrift Shop provides the simple gift of clean dry clothes for a person whose closet is under a SEPTA overpass. It also provides clothing suitable for work or job interviews for some of the people on there way out of the cycle of poverty with St. Vincent's assistance.

Without any viable space whatsoever, a Furniture Bank operates, quite literally, flowing out the front doors of the Hall. Generous donors goods are matched to the needs of young families to furnish simple, yet dignified, living spaces.

At the Learning Lab adults, who have seen the closing of two local literacy centers this year, can get help with math and reading or prepare for the GED exam. With skilled tutors and dedicated support staff, the chasm of isolation is bridged by language and analytical skills. Lab Director Suzanne Beaumont observes, "Small classes allow for individual attention. They experience the Lab as a supportive place" It's a place where alienation is overcome with a sense of community. For some, the gift of being able to read is the basis for the recovery of a sense of personal dignity.

At various times throughout year, learning on another level -- about preparing nutritious meals, how to find and land a job, and how to negotiate the morass of public social services -- finds its place in the "classrooms" at 109 East Price Street.

St. Vincent's Hall is the place in Germantown where the poor come for food and companionship. It is a safe, secure, place filled with natural light, laughter, and most precious of all, hope. For 115 years, the Hall has offered the best aspects of neighborhood life. But unless immediate action is taken to repair extensive damage to its very walls and foundation, the Hall will not withstand many more winters.

The St. Vincent community is seeking to raise $5 million to renovate the Hall and create permanent endowments for Face to Face, Inn Dwelling, and Parish Social Outreach to stabilize operating expenses and expand services. The programs, and the Hall that houses them, serve all people, regardless of race or religion. Because the mission is broader than one parish, funds will be sought from both the parish membership and external constituencies.

"Imagine going to see the doctor in a space with no walls, no doors, not even a complete ceiling. People, no matter the circumstances, need to have privacy and dignity. They have a right to space that is not in immanent danger of being shut down by L&I, space they don't have to share with storage boxes and clutter."

Despite years of extensive damage, St. Vincent's Hall is still home to Face to Face and Parish ministries. Encompassing nearly 32,000 square feet, the Hall is now reduced to less than 14,000 feet of usable space. In terribly cramped and inadequate conditions, with makeshift plumbing and heat, the Dining Room serves 27,000 meals a year, the Food Cupboard distributes 30,000 parcels of food, the Health Clinic provides primary health services and referrals for 1500 people, and the Thrift Shop clothes hundreds of families. The Hall also provides administration space for most parish social ministry programs, storage for Inn Dwelling donations, and serves as an auditorium/gymnasium hosting athletic practice for two neighborhood schools.

As bad as conditions are in the building, its inhabitants would have no place to go without it. Its closure would mean more than the loss of a beloved community symbol. Thousands of guests and clients would literally be displaced, depriving them of the one stable haven left for them in Germantown.

St. Vincent's Hall has always been a haven in the community. Built in 1884 in the style of Frank Furness, it is a grand building, constructed in an era when materials were plentiful and labor cheap. Years of benign neglect may have dimmed its elegance, but they have not obscured the dramatic elements of its High Victorian design.

Since 1994, St. Vincent's has invested more than $100,000 into the building, but that does not begin to cover the costs of needed repair.

Water is the major culprit and for the past 30 years it has carved persistent and insidious paths, eating away at plaster and interior finishes as well as parts of basement walls. Damage from a leaking roof, damaged gutters, porous brick chimneys, and poor drainage threatens its integrity. The only part of the building that is currently heated is the first floor, so in the winter, only the first floor dries out. Other parts of the building, particularly the two below-grade levels, stay damp and moldy. The natural consequence of nature's freeze and thaw cycles--expansion and contraction--have caused extensive interior damage in the sub-basement. In several rooms, the flooring has completely disintegrated down to the dirt. A patchwork quilt of copper pipes has been rigged to deliver heat and water to the Dining Room and the Health Clinic.

The current structure, eligible for historical certification, is considered a local treasure and a fixture in the community. Careful consideration was given to the question of renovation versus building anew, but cost estimates for new construction, when combined with the loss of services to the poor over a long period, the impact on the Church, and the loss of a significant neighborhood 'anchor', directed that the choice be made to save the existing structure. Throughout the slow deterioration, the building has been in continuous use, but experts say that after a few more winters--the building will no longer be habitable.

A total of $2.5 million is needed to cover the projected costs of renovating and equipping the Hall in a five-phase process. Breaking the project into phases enables valuable community programs to operate throughout all but the most hazardous stages of construction, ensures the most critical efforts to take priority, and allows expenses to be controlled based on availability of funds. Phase One, paid for entirely by donations, included fire code and life safety improvements. The work was completed, inspected and approved by the city in January 1997.

When the renovation is completed, the Hall will once again feature six habitable levels of space as opposed to the two currently in use. Specific details, costs, projected uses and qualifications of the project managers are attached in Appendix A.

In addition to the capital funds to restore the Hall, $2.5 million is sought to create endowments for Face to Face, Inn Dwelling, and Parish Social Outreach.

The programs are cost-effective, have consistent, demonstrable outcomes, and are supported by volunteers from nearly every religious denomination in the area. Because of the low overhead, programs can be both targeted and flexible; unencumbered by bureaucracy and structure, they can easily be retooled to meet changing community needs. But those needs are overwhelming, and the programs have reached maximum capacity with the funding they have.

With current resources, Inn Dwelling cannot take on the administration of more houses, which freezes at 25 the number of families served. Face to Face cannot grow its Dining Room or extend health services beyond what they now handle. The food is often the reason people come to St. Vincent's, but once there, they can avail themselves of other vital services. Face to Face wants to offer hot meals daily, extend the camp to run additional weeks in the summer and enlarge the Neighborhood Art Project to continue the preventative intervention with children and their parents.

While they have benefited from foundation grants in the past and receive support from local churches and organizations, both groups do all that they do without a stable operating budget. The programs live a "hand to mouth" existence and the precariousness of their position puts valuable, often irreplaceable, services at risk. The programs seek to raise funds to offset 30 percent of their current operating budgets, and a sizable and unrestricted endowment is the best and most flexible tool to achieve that goal. As the Parish begins engaging the local community in conversations about our common future, we also must prepare to respond with long-term, adequately funded programs.

In addition, the Hall renovation will double the amount of available space. While there is no shortage of ideas and plans to take advantage of this increase, there are also no funds to make more programs possible.

The endowment will be managed professionally by investment specialists. A 501Cs non-profit corporation, St. Vincent's Community Center, has been established to govern the endowment and oversee the professional managers. The Community Center's board will be composed of representatives of Inn Dwelling, Face to Face, Parish Social Outreach, parish members, neighbors, recipients of the services, and volunteers.

The endowment is only one part of a set of comprehensive strategies being developed for these community ministries. Volunteers and Parish leaders are putting together a development plan to augment the endowment with annual giving, and major gifts campaigns for specific needs.

Endowed funds would not only enable broader and deeper services extended to more people, it would also decrease dependence on St. Vincent's. St. Vincent's has drawn from its own reserves to start and maintain these programs and will continue to support them. But an independent income would lessen their dependence on Parish funds and ensure program and building continuity for many years to come.

For nearly 150 years, the Vincentians and generations of collaborators of all faiths have maintained their commitment to the community, contributing dollar and people resources that cannot be measured. Now we need the support of the whole community to ensure that the Hall remains a center for the whole community, providing services in partnership with the whole community.