Everyone Deserves Safe Shelter
There are only a few emergency shelter options for those who are experiencing homelessness. This is especially true for women and children. RITI Memphis is one of those few places that is open for women, children and men. Each night our congregations and campus are where they turn for safe respite from the dangers and scarcity of the streets of our city.
“I just need a place that is safe.”
This is a sentence we hear daily from hundreds of guests year after year.
For guests experiencing homelessness, the environment in Memphis is increasingly complex. Guests often arrive carrying histories of loss, violence, or chronic illness. At the same time, the local shortage of affordable housing, medical respite beds, and emergency shelter for women and children continues to limit safe options for families and medically fragile adults.
The crisis of the availability of safe and free shelter in our city was the motivation for the birth of Room in the Inn-Memphis in 2009. I wish that I could say that in the last 16 years the issue has been solved and children no longer make their beds on sidewalks or in the backseats of cars in parking lots.
The reality is that more children than ever, hundreds more than in 2009, continue to have parents who say, “I just need a place that is safe for my family.”
Our Congregational Shelter volunteers are our guests’ last hope for a warm meal and safe bed at the end of a long day of searching.
Our Family Inn is one of only a few shelters for families in every form (two parent, single mom, single dad, children of all ages).
Our Recuperative Care Center is the first space of its kind in the Midsouth, providing shelter and supportive services for those discharged from the hospital with no home in which to recover from illness and injury.
Our Housing Stabilization Program is groundbreaking in its year-long follow-up with former RITI shelter guests who move into permanent housing so that they build all the tools and support they need in order to not return to homelessness.
How will Room in the Inn respond to the current crisis?
We will keep going.
We will accompany our guests through the fear and uncertainty they face every day.
We will hear their stories.
We will respond.
Will you join us?
Peace,
Rev. Lisa Anderson
Executive Director
Room in the Inn – Memphis
Room in the Inn is one of only a few shelters in Memphis whose programs are always free to guests.
Your donations make that possible.