One of the first family shelters in Massachusetts, Jessie’s House gives struggling families a safe place to call home while they work with CHD staff on skills and strategies that foster self-sufficiency.

Jessie’s House was founded in 1983 to respond to the growing numbers of unhoused people in Hampshire County. Indeed, the early 1980s marked the emergence of what many consider the modern era of homelessness in the US. The homeless population increased substantially during that decade, partly due to a major recession in 1981-82, the deinstitutionalization of people with serious mental illness, and deep budget cuts to housing programs and social service agencies.

In 1982, two concerned Hampshire County residents, Priscilla White and the late Catherine Bennett, called for local action to respond to this troubling trend. White raised contributions and coordinated the support of social service agencies to produce a needs assessment of the situation. After White became director of what was then called Homeless Services at CHD, she was able to write a grant for $100,000 to launch Jessie’s House, which opened in Northampton, before moving to Amherst in 2005. Bennett was director of the shelter from 1988 to 2008.

Jessie’s House is named for the late Jessie Benoit, who owned the Red Lion Diner, a 24-hour restaurant in Northampton that was one of the only places in the area where the needy were welcome. Called “Ma” by many, Benoit provided hot meals to the homeless and gave some of them part-time jobs at the diner. She became a part-time staff member at Jessie’s House after bequeathing the diner to her daughter. Jessie’s House was dedicated in her honor by Gov. Mike Dukakis in 1983, and she continued to work at the shelter until her retirement in 2001.

Located in a Victorian-era house that formerly housed pastors’ families from the adjacent First Congregational Church, Jessie’s House is now home to six families, who receive not only shelter, but also food, case management, and referrals to other community services.

Establishing Fiscal Independence

The length of families’ stays at Jessie’s House vary. At present, the state’s Emergency Assistance Family Shelter System has a six-month limit—a policy that was enacted last year to reign in the growth and costs of a system that has become extremely overburdened in the past couple of years.

“Sometimes it’s a quick stay for a family at Jessie’s House—they will come in, and within a month or two, they already have somewhere lined up to live,” said Lisa Connolly, director of emergency assistance programs for CHD’s Diversion, Shelter, and Housing (DSH) division. “There are some families that are more independent—they will find their own landlord, make the connection, and let us know. Sometimes they’ll bring the landlord to us and we’ll initiate the conversation to provide support based on the family’s need.”

In many cases, the stay is longer, and Jessie’s House helps families develop the life skills needed to establish sustainable self-sufficiency. The shelter’s outreach program also assists families in the transition out of the shelter and provides extensive stabilization supports once they find more permanent homes for two years, during which time families continue to meet with their caseworkers on a regular basis.

For Jessie’s House residents who are unemployed or underemployed, DSH Family Caseworker Felicia James works with them on their job search—including help with their resumes—and Jessie’s House also partners with MassHire, a state program for connecting job candidates to employers. James enjoys helping instill confidence in residents when it’s at its lowest. “At first, some people don’t think they’re capable of finding stabilization and getting a job, earning income, and being able to pay bills,” she said. “It’s great to help them go through it and see the smiles on their faces as they complete the program and they get their housing.”

Under Massachusetts Emergency Assistance shelter rules, families at Jessie’s House save 30 percent of their income for the month, which is held in escrow, and once their stay is over, their savings goes back to them to help with their transition into permanent housing.

Family Homelessness: a Persisting Problem

Prior to the 1980s, there was a common misconception that homelessness was an issue that only pertained to single men and women who had alcohol and drug problems However, unhoused families make up 33 percent of all homeless people in the US, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Compounding the problem in Massachusetts is the fact that the state is the third most expensive in the country to rent a home in recent years—partially caused by lack of available housing, which has led to extreme rent increases and unaffordable home prices.

“The reasons a family becomes homeless runs the gamut,” including the state’s affordable housing crisis, said Lexus McCollaum, CHD’s ADA coordinator for DSH.

Homelessness impacts the health and wellbeing of all family members, but especially children. Unhoused children are in fair or poor health twice as often as other children, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, and they experience more mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression. They are twice as likely to experience hunger, and four times as likely to have delayed development. They also face barriers to enrolling and attending school, including transportation and residency requirements.

The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which protects, among other things, the education rights of children and youth experiencing homelessness, was passed in 1987 because as the 1980s went on, the national government began to address an immediate and unprecedented homelessness crisis that wasn’t going away, regardless of the health of the economy. CHD’s McKinney-Vento liaison, DSH Care Coordinator Vanessa Rodriguez, “works with the parents and school staff to ensure that the kids are enrolled in school, and she communicates with the school departments to make sure they have transportation to and from school,” said McCollaum.

Extra Touches

Volunteers and grants help provide supplemental enhancements to make the children’s stay at the family shelter more comfortable—what Care Coordinator Jessica Moynahan calls “adding some sprinkle magic.”

For example, children at Jessie’s House benefit from the Play Pal program, in which college student volunteers are recruited by the Horizons for Homeless Children organization to visit the house at 5:00 p.m. and keep the kids busy. “They play with the children—board games and puzzles, and they read books,” said James. “It gives the parents some free time to get meals ready, do chores, and settle in.”

An outdoor playscape (pictured) was recently built in the side yard of Jessie’s House thanks to a grant from Home Works, a state program that addresses the needs of children in emergency assistance shelters. Home Works grants have also funded a lending library box and a glider bench for the side yard.

Jessie’s House also receives local contributions, such as cookie-making kits from Pete’s Sweets in East Longmeadow, and gift drives from such organizations as the Amherst Police Department, which hosts an annual stuff-a-cruiser event.

Empowering Families

For a family shelter like Jessie’s house, the goal is to not only keep families together under one roof through the crisis of homelessness, but also helping them find the resources they need to succeed.

McCollaum said it’s gratifying to “meet a family where they’re at and help them get to where they want to be,” she said. “Often, when they put their mind to it, we can help make it happen.”

DSH Program Manager Alisha Watts agrees: “My favorite part of the job is talking to someone when they are at their worst and giving them inspiration that they can do better—that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I tell them, ‘you can do this.’”

Jessie’s House is just one example of how DSH is going into communities with serious, pervasive, and persistent housing needs and making a difference, according to Dr. William Dávila, vice president of DSH. “We are making communities stronger, bringing added value, and making a difference in ways that ripple beyond simply providing housing,” he said. “The work we do means stable and healthier families, heads of households that are better able to parent their children, contribute to the work force, and be contributing members of their communities.”

A Former Jessie’s House Resident Found Stability

Bonnie Dirth stayed at Jessie’s House with her three-year-old son for five months in 2013 after living in a hotel in western Massachusetts under the state’s emergency shelter program.

When she was at that shelter, she used to drive all the way to Fitchburg one day a week to work in an automotive parts store. But the arduous commute took its toll on her car, and she couldn’t afford the repairs. “At that point, getting to Fitchburg was undoable, she recalled.

She said the social workers at the hotel were obviously overwhelmed by their caseloads. But when she and her son moved to Jessie’s House, a case manager referred her to a community organization that helped her enroll in a program called Secure Jobs Connect, an initiative that provided job readiness training and job placement. “Jessie’s House helped me get in touch with the right resources,” said Dirth. “I had a lot more individual help.”

Dirth, a native of Orange, MA, had courses in culinary arts when she was in high school, at Franklin County Technical School in Montague, and she had enjoyed them, but had never pursued the field. Soon, however, she was taking coursework and testing to receive a food service certification, and then she obtained two part-time jobs—as a kitchen assistant at Highland Valley Elder Services in Northampton, and as a baker’s assistant at Outlook Farm in Westhampton.

Over the years she has worked in the hospitality industry at several restaurants and has lived in her own apartments with her son, now 14.

Dirth credits Jessie’s House with providing her with a safe place to live, helping her establish child care so she could work, and giving her individualized case management. “They went over my options—what I personally wanted to do in order to move forward—and pointed me in the right direction to achieve my goals,” she said.