Why A Shelter License Is Important:

1.  Our program provides people with more than just housing.  It is a program designed to assist individuals and families in accessing the resources they need to address the critical issues and problems in their lives which caused them to lose their independent housing.  Our program is a life changing program, not a housing program!

We help people understand and address issues like: mental health conditions; legal problems; education and lack of employable skills; childcare; addictions to legal and illegal substances; transportation; life skills; budgeting and money management; relationship skills; physical health; attitudinal issues; and barriers to self-sufficiency or self-reliance.

Our program operates in a way that is similar to a university or college taking students into housing while they are enrolled in courses of study.  It is like a medical facility housing someone while they are receiving a doctor’s care.  Housing is what a person gets while they get what they really need from the program.

If our housing program were intended to be short-term, we would offer people month-to-month leases with no services.  We do not screen people for credit-worthiness or history of suitability for housing, like many apartment or rental property managers.  As a supportive housing program, we do not monitor people or supervise them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so we do our best to screen for suitability for our program.  There are, however, times a person proves to be unsuitable for shared housing or independent housing, so we need the power to terminate a client/resident from our program and to get them out of the housing in a short period of time.

2.  Our program requires residents to be responsible for the housing in which they live.  It is not designed in the model of "Housing First," which we reject as less than desirable.  If a person will not or cannot maintain our housing and fulfill the minimal responsibilities of semi-independent living, then they are not well suited for our program.  Such persons are better served in a more intensely supervised program or placed in a housing unit that is far less demanding, like a motel, where the law clearly allows the person or family to be put out if they do not adhere to the rules, which includes paying what they owe.

3.  Other supportive housing providers require the same kind of control as our organization in order to operate effectively.  I do not believe that Providence House, Delaware House, Family Service or DRENK Mental Health Center could operate serving victims of domestic violence, chemically addicted people, those with developmental disabilities, or the mentally ill if they had to go to Landlord/Tenant court every time they believed that termination of a client from a program with any sort of housing was necessary.

4.  The New Jersey State Legislature has seen fit to adopt special legislation to permit groups and organizations that provide temporary housing to operate under a special set of rules that provide for an effective and efficient operation of a program and not treat these groups as though they are traditional landlords.

Return to Homes of Hope, Inc. vs. Mt. Holly Township

Read "A History of Homeless Housing in Mt. Holly" by AHG President Kent Pipes

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