Meals with Dignity for Unsheltered in Houston

On July 8, 2024, Houston, Texas, was hit by Hurricane Beryl, a Category 1 hurricane that caused unprecedented damage. Some of our staff members were among the millions of people who were without electricity for up to 10 days. As quickly as possible, staff members began relief efforts in any capacity that was available to them.

We were not able to host our regular Community LUV program because of the lack of electricity, loss of food, and issues with mold. Using an outside catering company and the help of volunteers, we were still able to provide approximately 500 meals. After electricity was restored, our staff assisted community members with applying for FEMA assistance, with minimum award of $750 per family.

Our Community LUV program resumed in August and September with an increased attendance of approximately 5-10 people. We believe the slow but steady increase in attendance over the last 4-5 months is a result of the community’s continued struggles with food inflation and unemployment/under-employment barriers.

In October, we held our third annual job and resource fair. Participating employers made a range of positions available to include multiple levels of education, availability, and career levels. We do not currently have results on the number of new hires.

We continue to work on meaningfully engaging with the people in our community who are looking for assistance relating to homelessness and food insecurity. The extreme heat of our Texas summer weather has brought a slight increase in the number of people we serve. We are seeing about 25 people come out for the monthly event for meals, showers, and haircuts. About 15-20 of them are regulars.

We do have an obstacle that we encounter during the summer because of our youth program. Our building is a community center, so all of the programs share space. During the summer, the children are in the building from 7am -6pm. Our space for the Community LUV program is restricted to one area and we have to shorten the service hours from 9am -2pm to 10am -12pm. We have still been able to provide the same services except for the distribution of clothing. We don’t have enough space to keep a lot of clothing in store during the summer. We were still able to provide clothes for people using the showers but there was not a wide selection. Clothing storage continues to be a challenge even outside of the summer months.

The main impact of decreased hours and space during the summer is potentially making our community members feel that they are not as important to us, and potentially making our staff feel overwhelmed by serving 2 high-energy programs during the same timeframe. While we are still working out the logistics, we did improve over last year by keeping the program going in this summer instead of suspending it like we did last year. We celebrate the improvement!