Upcoming Meetings

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Family Promise of WNY is an emergency shelter for unhoused families in our community.  We provide temporary housing and wrap-around support as they work to find their way back home.  We are a New York State certified program and we've been serving this community for over 25 years.  Our current shelter is located at 75 Hickory in the Ellicott District.  Between 55-70% of the guests we serve successfully find housing.  Beyond housing, we are also stabilizing every family we work with.  92% of the families who exited our program in 2024 did not re-enter the homeless system. 

Erie County is experiencing a homeless crisis.  As a leading shelter program, we were asked by Erie County to open more shelter beds to help families experiencing homelessness in our community.  The fastest growing segment of the homeless population is children.  We want to help. 

In our search for a second location, Family Promise’s main objective was finding a safe, community setting for the children in our program.   We considered several factors when choosing a site.  First, we wanted to build close to our existing shelter.  We began by looking in the Ellicott District, but when we could not find a viable site we expanded our search to the neighboring Masten District and found this series of city-owned lots that had been vacant for many years.  Second, we were seeking a site that was the ideal size, whose zoning permitted the use we were proposing and which was a mix of residential and commercial that would help our families feel safe but give them proximity to the resources they need.  Being on the main thoroughfare of East Ferry near Jefferson gives our families access to bus lines, grocery stores, barber shops, a library, daycare providers, etc.  Finally, most of the families we serve come from the Masten District.  14208 is the zip code where the greatest number of the families in our program come from.  14215 is number two.   We wanted to keep those families close to their schools, churches, doctor’s offices and communities.   

We are specifically a family shelter and 75% of the people we serve are children.  This makes us the safest emergency shelter program by design.  We are held to higher safety standards by New York State than any other kind of emergency shelter. We serve all kinds of families, no matter if they are led by single moms, single dads, two-parent families or are multi-generational.  All our placements come directly from the Erie County Department of Social Services and we cannot accept walk-ins.  Our team has a great deal of control over who is able to stay in our program.  We are quick to exit families if they pose a safety risk during their stay with us. 

To protect the children in our program, the following people CANNOT be placed in our shelter and must be placed at other shelter facilities that are designed to accommodate their unique needs:

• single adults
• children without parents
• people seeking legal status in this country
• people with untreated mental health conditions
• people with untreated substance abuse disorder
• people with a violent criminal background
• people fleeing an active domestic violence situation
• sex offenders

We are a small-scale program by design and our project fits the density of this neighborhood.  Family Promise will house 6-8 families at any given time (with no more than 40 people allowed). The site we plan to build on includes 7 vacant lots.  Our program is adding a density equivalent to 7 single homes being built on those sites.   

We understand homeowners are worried about their property values.  Our shelter facility has been carefully designed to integrate seamlessly with the surrounding buildings in the neighborhood.  Our research shows that small projects under 50 people like the one we are proposing do not impact property values because they lack density.  On the contrary, building a brand-new, beautifully designed facility with funding from New York State will bring millions of dollars of value to the neighborhood and replace a long-standing vacant lot.  For discretion, we will not have signage on the front of our building to identify it as a shelter - it will just look like development coming to the area. 

We strive to be good neighbors!  We will bring the following benefits to the community:

• Jobs - At our current shelter, we have approximately 20-25 employees.  As we are looking to replicate this model, we would hope to find people in the surrounding community to fill these positions. 
• Partnerships - Supporting the community by creating partnerships with local businesses and offering our resources and expertise.
• New Building - Our project includes adding $8.6 million to the community with a building that models the surrounding houses, giving a community rather than institutional feel.
• Security - We staff our building 24/7, providing a level of vigilance to any neighborhood we are in. 
• Volunteers - We partner with hundreds of volunteers each year and invite the community to get involved in the work we do!