Safe Haven Family Shelter needs donations to fill ‘Welcome Home Kits’ for families transitioning into permanent housing

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — For families transitioning out of shelters and into permanent housing, getting a roof over their heads is only half the battle.

The other half: filling their new home. Stocking their new homes isn’t always cheap. That’s where Safe Haven Family Shelter steps in and provides kits full of needed supplies for families. However, the organization has had trouble keeping up with demand.

“Six months ago this was full, and it didn’t take long for it to be depleted the way you see it now,” explained Andrew Freeman, the CEO of the Safe Haven Family Shelter while pointing to a half-empty shelf of bath towels.

They are part of the ‘Welcome Home Kits’ that Safe Haven gives to families who walk through its doors, after finding permanent housing.

“Sometimes after you make deposits and you give security money, that’s all you have,” Freeman explained. “You’re just in a room. You don’t have the furniture. You don’t have the essential goods. That’s what we want to try and avoid.”

It’s something that’s become harder to avoid. Typically, the organization needs 10 to 15 full kits per month. However, with low stock and greater need, they are urgently looking to make 30 to 50 full kits.

“It just costs more. It costs more to live,” Freeman said. “We are spending 18 percent more just to do the same things we did last year with our families.”

As of publication, inflation has hovered at around three percent, down from the previous month. However, consumers are still pinching pennies at the register.

“I experience inflation in my life, families are experiencing homelessness also experiencing inflation, agencies that support them experience inflation as well, so it’s just costly,” Freeman said. “We want to make sure that we don’t just put them in a box, and say here you’re housed, that’s going to make them prideful, and make their space feel like home.”

Last year, Safe Haven served over 330 families and housed around 150 families.

“It is a culmination of more than 100 days of work for many of these families and for my team to get these families from when they walk through our doors at the shelter and just are sheltered, and just made whole and felt safe and to giving them the pride and the opportunity to thrive that’s a long journey, so when you get to that point its time to celebrate,” he explained.

You can help by:

• Purchasing items off wish lists to be sent to Safe Haven
• Hosting a donation drive for full welcome home kits or for items in the kit
• Donating gift cards to Amazon and Walmart
• Making a monetary donation to support the purchase of these items

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“The family structure is about the same, it’s just more of them. We don’t know if it was the moratorium that was ended or if it’s just the inflation and the housing market that is just outlandish, right most of our families work, it’s just even with working it’s hard to find a house in Nashville,” Freeman said.

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