Same Mission, New Look.

At Miriam's House our mission is and has always been: to end homelessness and rebuild lives through the empowerment of women and families.

This mission to end homelessness has never been more relevant than in recent years as the country and Lynchburg reeled from the effects of the recession. One of many devastating effects of the financial crisis was an increase in homelessness. In Lynchburg, we saw a 65% increase in homelessness and most startling of all: an almost 200% increase in family homelessness. Many families lost the resources necessary to deal with a crisis and they ended up in our shelters, sleeping outdoors, or in their cars.

This was and is unacceptable. We believe strongly that housing is a basic human right. No person, especially children should be without a home. And so, in response to the need, we’ve grown—by over 500%. At this point, we are able to serve every single family who becomes homeless in our community!

In this year alone, we have served over 100 homeless children. These children are now in the safety of a home and their life of play, school, and security has been restored.

Our capacity to meet this need is, in large part, due to each of you. Your support means that we have not merely remained in existence throughout the recession but that we have expanded. In 2017 alone, we doubled our community-based program to serve every homeless family while we transitioned our onsite program to serve chronically homeless women—women who have been homeless for over a year and need the intensive support of our onsite program to get back on their feet.

Our organization employs multiple solutions to end homelessness: Community First—our community based program, Magnolia Street Supportive Housing—our onsite program aimed at chronically homeless women, our Aftercare Support Group which works to ensure women and families don’t return to homelessness, and others. In light of the many ways we address homelessness, we have rebranded and now feature the tagline “solutions to homelessness”. 

During the rebrand process, it was important to us to pay homage to our wonderful origin on Magnolia Street by using the magnolia in our logo while also ensuring our community recognizes that we as an organization remain committed to developing and implementing solutions to homelessness even as we expand and grow. We are excited about our new look and hope you enjoy our new website!

We are grateful to the incredible team at Knapsack Creative who donated their time and development skills to beautifully redesign our logo and website!