Miriam's Kitchen NGOs
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Miriam's Kitchen is a nonprofit working to end chronic (long-term) and veteran homelessness in our nation's capital. From meals to housing, all of our programs are unified by one goal: to guide people home.
We serve about 2,500 adults every year, helping guests (what we call our clients) increase their income, improve their health, and find permanent housing. In addition to our front-line services, we push for full implementation of best practices citywide and work to improve the entire homeless services system. This combination of direct services and systems change is a best practice (yet rare), and makes Miriam's Kitchen an important part of the equation of ending veteran and chronic homelessness in our nation's capital.
First, we provide services to help people permanently move out of homelessness. We start by providing over 60,000 healthy meals and high-quality social services to an estimated 5,000 homeless individuals each year. Delicious meals help us engage our homeless neighbors so our Case Managers can create meaningful therapeutic relationships. Once we have earned our guests' trust, we provide a wide variety of services 30 hours a week in our dining room, including housing assistance, medical care and mental health assistance.
We are most proud to report that this past year through our direct service programs,Miriam's Kitchen housed out 1,00th guest! Put another way, we ended an approximate collective 5,025 years of homelessness for these individuals. In fiscal year 2018 alone we helped 117 people find permanent homes, connected 240 people with medical care and 236 people with mental health care beyond our walls. We also helped 22 people successfully apply for and obtain Social Security Income.
Once people are in housing, our Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) team provides intensive wraparound services to keep 95% of residents in our PSH program safe and stable in their homes so they can improve their lives and build independence.
This approach isn't just the right thing to do, it's also cost efficient! It costs $40,000 a year to provide emergency services to a person who is chronically homeless living on the streets, but only $16,000 to provide that same person with permanent housing and supportive services. And there is a 92% success rate--the highest in the US!
The second way we work to end chronic homelessness is by improving DC's homeless services system. We collaborate with the city government and other service providers to study what works in other American communities and push to implement those best practices here. Phoenix, Houston, Salt Lake City, Virginia, and New Orleans have all made huge strides in ending chronic homelessness. Now, we are proud to say that Washington, DC has made significant progress too! And Miriam's Kitchen has been a significant part of that success. We helped launch and expand a city wide initiative called Coordinated Entry, which is an innovative and efficient system for assessing individuals experiencing homelessness, identifying their needs, and matching them to appropriate housing placements.
We also launched a city wide advocacy campaign to help build the public will to end chronic homelessness. This ongoing effort involves over 102 organizations and 5,500 individuals-including men and women who are sharing their experiences of being homeless to bring about systemic change. Partly due to this effort DC has created a strategic plan designed to end chronic homelessness, allocated historic levels of resources to fight this problem, and is now working to ensure full and fast implementation.
Thanks to your support we are able reinforce the dignity of our guests who are homeless, provide them with a community of belonging, and work to create lasting change so they can gain self-sufficiency and have a better quality of life.
We serve about 2,500 adults every year, helping guests (what we call our clients) increase their income, improve their health, and find permanent housing. In addition to our front-line services, we push for full implementation of best practices citywide and work to improve the entire homeless services system. This combination of direct services and systems change is a best practice (yet rare), and makes Miriam's Kitchen an important part of the equation of ending veteran and chronic homelessness in our nation's capital.
First, we provide services to help people permanently move out of homelessness. We start by providing over 60,000 healthy meals and high-quality social services to an estimated 5,000 homeless individuals each year. Delicious meals help us engage our homeless neighbors so our Case Managers can create meaningful therapeutic relationships. Once we have earned our guests' trust, we provide a wide variety of services 30 hours a week in our dining room, including housing assistance, medical care and mental health assistance.
We are most proud to report that this past year through our direct service programs,Miriam's Kitchen housed out 1,00th guest! Put another way, we ended an approximate collective 5,025 years of homelessness for these individuals. In fiscal year 2018 alone we helped 117 people find permanent homes, connected 240 people with medical care and 236 people with mental health care beyond our walls. We also helped 22 people successfully apply for and obtain Social Security Income.
Once people are in housing, our Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) team provides intensive wraparound services to keep 95% of residents in our PSH program safe and stable in their homes so they can improve their lives and build independence.
This approach isn't just the right thing to do, it's also cost efficient! It costs $40,000 a year to provide emergency services to a person who is chronically homeless living on the streets, but only $16,000 to provide that same person with permanent housing and supportive services. And there is a 92% success rate--the highest in the US!
The second way we work to end chronic homelessness is by improving DC's homeless services system. We collaborate with the city government and other service providers to study what works in other American communities and push to implement those best practices here. Phoenix, Houston, Salt Lake City, Virginia, and New Orleans have all made huge strides in ending chronic homelessness. Now, we are proud to say that Washington, DC has made significant progress too! And Miriam's Kitchen has been a significant part of that success. We helped launch and expand a city wide initiative called Coordinated Entry, which is an innovative and efficient system for assessing individuals experiencing homelessness, identifying their needs, and matching them to appropriate housing placements.
We also launched a city wide advocacy campaign to help build the public will to end chronic homelessness. This ongoing effort involves over 102 organizations and 5,500 individuals-including men and women who are sharing their experiences of being homeless to bring about systemic change. Partly due to this effort DC has created a strategic plan designed to end chronic homelessness, allocated historic levels of resources to fight this problem, and is now working to ensure full and fast implementation.
Thanks to your support we are able reinforce the dignity of our guests who are homeless, provide them with a community of belonging, and work to create lasting change so they can gain self-sufficiency and have a better quality of life.