South Overton Residential and Commercial Association

Shelter, Food, Support . . . Where?

Nov 28, 2003

by Alys L. Stuart


In an effort to support the families with children in the South Overton neighborhood who may be temporarily in need of shelter, the SORCA Neighbor News pre-sents the following informative article about the Lubbock Inter-faith Hospitality Network. TB


HERE . . . at the Lubbock Inter-faith Hospitality Network (LIHN). Originally founded in New Jersey in 1986, IHN has achieved national status. The Lubbock branch has been in ex-istence for four years for the pur-pose of giving aid to families (with children) who are without homes. LIHN provides tempo-rary shelter, meals and support to those families while they are pur-suing employment and housing. This period gives them time and the means to pull together their resources for a new start.


Supported entirely by donations and concerned, willing volunteers, LIHN is based in a centrally-located family center. The program is managed by an Executive Director who is, in ad-dition, a Licensed Professional Counselor. The ED/LPC works with the families and counsels them according to a plan designed to aid them in achieving their desired goals.


The success of LIHN is due to the work of host congregations (churches or synagogues) that agree to provide meals and accommodations for multiple families for one week every three months on a rotating basis. For that week the houses of worship become temporary homes to LIHN guest families.
The majority of guests consist of single-parent families where the parent may be either male or female. LIHN?’s requirements for acceptance into the program are the presence of children within the family; guest?’s wish to pursue employment as well as proper and affordable housing; and their desire to utilize the guidance toward these aims which is available through the resident ED/LPC.
Many of our former guests return for visits saying that their lives are going so well since their new begin-nings. Their children love to come back as they have memories of good experiences with Lubbock Interfaith, its hosts and volunteers.


Families (with children) who have been evicted, do not have their own residences and are sharing living quarters with family or friends, may contact LIHN to see if there is space available for them to enter the program.


There are 25 participating congre-gations and approximately 700 vol-unteers at present. We also welcome volunteers for special projects, sorting of donations, fundraising and solicitation of daily necessities as well as household items to help outgoing families set up housekeeping. If you believe your place of worship may be interested in our coalition of hosts and volunteers, please have your church leader contact the Ex-ecutive Director.
For further information, please con-tact Lubbock Interfaith Hospitality Network at 806-744-5035 during normal office hours.