COURTESY PHOTO
Lynn Family Success Center and Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development employees Harry McCabe, Michelle D’Amico and Lysa Newhall attended Tuesday’s United Way Real Estate and Building Industry Leadership breakfast.
BOSTON — Lynn Family Success Center caseworker Michelle D’Amico was the featured speaker at United Way’s Real Estate and Building Industry Leadership breakfast headlined by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.
The event highlighted United Way’s effort to end family homelessness with a $3 million fundraising goal. Part of that effort is underway in Lynn through a program called “Realizing Inter-Generational Success through Education” (RISE).
Sponsored by United Way and the Siemer Institute of Financial Stability, RISE works with the Lynn Public Schools and the Lynn Housing and Neighborhood Development to provide more than 150 families that are homeless or in unstable housing with intensive support.
Case managers like D’Amico work with the schools to identify homeless students, connect their families to financial opportunity services such as housing assistance, job training and financial coaching and provide students with tutoring and out-of-school time services.
“If there is one word I would use to describe homelessness, it would be ‘painful,’ D’Amico said. “We do everything in our power to address all of the issues our clients face and to change the perspective that homelessness is simply about a house.”
D’Amico works with homeless students and their families to help get them into housing and connected to the support services they need to get back on their feet and onto a path of financial stability.
Polito on Tuesday called family homelessness “a human tragedy” and told 1,200 real estate and building professionals attending the breakfast that the Baker administration has reduced the number of families living in hotels and motels from 1,500 in January 2015 to 211 today.
“This trend is heading in the right direction, and we will continue to work every day to identify families facing homelessness, triage them and get them the housing and support they need to be stable and healthy,” she said.
Despite the progress in moving families out of hotels and motels, there remain over 3,600 homeless families in Massachusetts in shelters. And one in every four families in this state is just one major setback away from financial disaster.
“It is going to take all of us — government, businesses, individuals, community-based organizations — working together to find the best programs and policies, and resources, that can be applied at the scale necessary to end family homelessness,” said Michael K. Durkin, president at United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley. “Real, positive solutions are out there and with public will, they can be implemented to make a real, lasting change.”