Shalom House has been a leading provider of homeless services in St. Louis since 1968. Serving more than 400 women annually, Shalom House has helped thousands of women who are homeless in the St. Louis Metropolitan area.
In July 2008 the organization became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and renamed itself Shalom House to focus on its residential programs, which were already named Shalom House. The word "shalom" means peace, completeness, and safety.
Founded in 1968 Shalom House, originally called United Methodist Metro Ministry and later Metro Homeless Center & Family Services, began as an urban ministry of The United Methodist Church - designed to support and enhance several small, struggling urban churches and provide resources, coordination, and specialized skills to enable these congregations to better serve their neighborhoods.
By 1972 Shalom House created the MetroServ Program to provide emergency food and other services to more than six thousand people annually without zip code restrictions. In the 1980s Shalom House expanded to provide programs for children and the elderly and aided in the creation of the Education Center for Family Violence and Habitat for Humanity in St. Louis. Shalom House's childcare programs later became a Head Start Preschool.
In 1988 Shalom House's residential programs began - first with a 25-bed Emergency Shelter, then in 1995 with the addition of a 12-bed Transitional Housing Program.
Today, Shalom House is focused solely on its residential programs.
Shalom House's Emergency Shelter is the St. Louis metropolitan area's only 24-hour emergency facility for homeless women with severe mental illness and chemical dependency that provides an array of comprehensive services to meet the needs of those who are deemed chronically homeless. Shalom House's Transitional Housing program is certified by the Missouri Department of Mental Health and is the only transitional housing program in St. Louis specifically geared toward clients with severe mental illness and that does not charge its clients a fee to participate.
Both programs provide residents with intensive case management services through a treatment team which consists of an on-site Social Worker, Substance Abuse Specialist, Occupational Therapist, Psychiatric Nurse, and Supportive Services Coordinator who works with each resident on a housing plan and coordinates the aftercare program to ensure housing stability. The treatment team conducts a variety of important assessments such as health, psychosocial, substance abuse, and occupational therapy on an on-going basis to insure that residents are meeting their treatment goals.
One of Shalom House's most important goals is ensuring that each resident is linked with long-term supportive services that continue well after their stay at Shalom House ends. Shalom House clients also have the opportunity to make the transition into our Transitional Housing Program or other applicable transitional housing programs in the community once they have worked to complete their treatment plan in our Emergency Shelter Program. This treatment plan includes mental health and substance abuse, treatment and counseling, linkage to long-term regimented health care supports, and life skills training designed to help each resident become self-sufficient and gain resources to maintain independence once in permanent housing.
As a direct result of our high caliber programs, Shalom House successfully permanently housed more than 60 formerly homeless women in 2009. Additionally, in the past 9 years, 97% of the women graduating from the Shalom House Transitional Housing Program into permanent housing remain permanently housed today.
In 2005 Shalom House's Board of Directors began to work on an organizational strategic plan, which provided a roadmap to upgrade the existing programs catered to chronically homeless women with mental illness and/or chemical dependency. In the fall of 2007, as part of that strategic plan, the board approved a name change and mission statement that more fully describes our commitment to providing comprehensive services to this vulnerable population. In 2008 Shalom House successfully obtained a new independent 501(c)(3) ruling. The direction of Shalom House under the strategic plan is to focus on its programs for chronically homeless women and strengthen its integrated treatment team model in order to provide holistic long-term services tailored to better engage chronically homeless women in services and to strengthen its aftercare services to ensure housing stability. Lastly, the plan calls for the addition of a Permanent Supportive Housing Program specifically catered to those clients who will need intensive on-going services in order to maintain housing stability.
Through the addition of the Shalom House Permanent Supportive Housing Program, the organization will be able to assist even more chronically homeless women with mental illness and chemical dependency in St. Louis. Shalom House will build capacity through developing the services necessary to fast-track its clients through the continuum of care; Emergency Shelter, to Transitional Housing, to Permanent Supportive Housing. Currently, the Shalom House 90-day Emergency Shelter and 24-month Transitional Housing Program represent the first two levels of the continuum of care. Because our programs assist more chronically homeless women with severe mental illness and health issues, we find that more intensive services are needed to help them engage in recovery toward independence. Those with severe mental illnesses and cognitive deficiencies will never be able to live completely independently and will require permanent housing with on-site support services.
This type of affordable housing is extremely rare in St. Louis and expensive. For this reason, Shalom House is laying the foundation to create its own Permanent Supportive Housing Program as proposed in St. Louis' Mayor Slay's "10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness." In this program, residents will move more quickly from Emergency Shelter, to Transitional Housing, to Permanent Supportive Housing. This calendar year, Shalom House will be able to build capacity and more effectively fulfill our mission by serving more chronically homeless women each year, placing more chronically homeless women in permanent housing with ongoing services that can help even those with the most severe mental illness and health issues sustain housing. With the addition of this new program, Shalom House would be the only residential program in St. Louis providing the full continuum of care for chronically homeless women in our community.
Executive Director History
1968 Rev. Dr. Greg Poole
1970 Rev. Charles Napire
1972 Rev. George Burgin
1976 Rev. Winfrey Dickerson
1977 Rev. Ken Gottman
1984 Rev. Harry Smith
1990 Diane Johnson
1997 Reginald Lee
2002 Kimberly Camp
2005 Tammy Laws