SERVING THE VULNERABLE

SERVING THE VULNERABLE

Your investment in housing

Over a 17-year period, Angela H.’s addiction followed her from North Carolina to Florida to Illinois as she cycled from crack cocaine to prostitution, accumulating along the way 82 arrests, 36 convictions and three stays in the penitentiary. All previous attempts at recovery and rehabilitation had failed.

Now, at Bonaventure House, she says, “I get to look at life through different eyes.”

How does it look?

“Clearer. Hopeful. I actually see myself going somewhere, becoming something.”

“These people have taught me how to stay sober on my own without being locked up,” Angela says. “Until now, other than when I was locked up, I’d never been clean since I was 21 years old.”

For the first time in decades, Angela has goals: Find stable housing. Graduate from cosmetology school and become a stylist. Achieve independence.

 

PillarA-InsidePhoto

Last year AMITA Health Alexian Brothers Housing and Health Alliance provided 175 men and women like Angela who were living with HIV/AIDS the support, structure and tools they needed to begin turning their lives around. The Housing and Health Alliance provided a safe place to land for individuals facing homelessness and who often had recently completed detox programs for substance use disorders.

Ascension Health, AMITA Health Alexian Brothers Health System’s corporate parent and the country’s largest nonprofit health system, recognized the Housing and Health Alliance out of all of its ministries last year with the prestigious Ascension Health Ministry of the Year award.

In addition, AMITA Health Alexian Brothers Center for Mental Health supported residential programs for 59 homeless clients with severe and persistent mental illness, including 32 clients in the Sy and Anne Okner Transitional Living Program. “The majority of these individuals are coming to us off of the streets,” says Rick Germann, executive director for the Center for Mental Health.

Both the Sy and Anne Okner Transitional Living Program and the Housing and Health Alliance provide safe, stable communities that aid recovery through case management, group and individual therapies, spiritual care and support services. Both are made possible thanks to donors.

BACK TO MAIN PAGE