New center sheltering families

FINDLAY — The City Mission of Findlay's new crisis and emergency housing shelter — Martha's Home — is designed to serve women with children. "In all our family rooms, about 99% of those units were women with children. We saw that we were going to need to increase the space and the capacity, which we did not have on site," said Kathryn Bausman, executive director City Mission of Findlay. Women and children represent one of the fastest growing demographics in the homeless population, she said. This year City Mission's family rooms were at full capacity the entire year. Martha's Home, a ministry of City Mission, opened on Dec. 23, to address the need for expanding resources and providing a safe environment for families. "There can be issues within the homeless population where they may have a tendency to have higher levels of substance abuse or mental health problems. With our limited facility, the children were having to share common areas and we didn't feel that was healthy," Bausman said. There also needed to be space for women to have separate counseling and the children to have separate play areas. "That really was what propelled us to look at creating a women with children center," she said Martha's Home offers nine private family rooms. An additional wing with eight more rooms and an overflow room will be implemented in the next phase of development planned for the upcoming year. The overflow room will ensure that no families are turned away. "The increase in homelessness for women with children has now become 33 percent of the homeless population in the country," Bausman said. Partnering with local organizations such as Family Resource Center and other mental health agencies, Martha's Home provides on-site support and mental health resources. The new facility also allows City Mission to open a year-round low barrier, overnight shelter. "The shelter does not require drug or alcohol testing and does not require background checks. It is a much lower barrier of entry for safe overnight stays," she said. "Because we had women with children on the property, I did not feel it was safe to open up that kind of shelter on the City Mission property. With the opening of Martha's home, we were then able to open the low barrier shelter safely on City Mission property," she said. For more information about City Mission Of Findlay go to its website, https://www.findlaymission.org