Durham Interfaith Hospitality Network helps evicted tenants find homes of their own

For years, mother of a single daughter Elizabeth didn’t have a place she could call home. She had to choose the better option to lead her troubled life among all the options available: Living at a rented but squalid-looking house, at facilities for the homeless or out on the street.

But Elizabeth’s story is no longer the same today. She managed to break her cycle of poverty, escaped homelessness and found a home of her own that allows her to take better care of her child. An act of benevolence by the Durham Interfaith Hospitality Network (DIHN) that takes care of homeless people in the Durham area totally turned her life around.

DIHN, a non-profit corporation, has instilled new hope to many families like Elizabeth’s over the years. In order to address the immediate needs of homeless families, the DIHN extends its helping hand through mobilizing Durham congregations and people of faith that helped them move the homeless into their own homes and finally into happiness.

However, ensuring residential stability is not the only thing that DIHN focuses on. Along with approximately 30 Durham congregations, DIHN continues to provide immediate shelter and food to the destitute in a warm and cozy environment, and side by side it helps the families to realize their long-term goals of greater social functioning and self-sufficiency. Their affiliated congregations generally cater to 3 families per week on a rotating basis. Guests staying at these congregations receive a free evening and morning meal and there are a number of activities held during the day including skills training, getting proper medical care, credit counseling and housing assistance.

Since its founding in 1993, DIHN has always been striving to help struggling families get back on their own feet, ensure their residential and financial stability, and employment in addition to looking after their other needs like health insurance and care, psychological well-being, transportation and childcare.

To serve the homeless people and the ones facing adversity is just a part of their religious teachings, people at DIHN believe. With an aim to create larger awareness among the populace to that end, the corporation arranges regular conferences, conversations and dialogues, which are addressed by spiritual leaders from different faith backgrounds.

To DIHN, it is more like a challenge to meet the needs of families with higher barriers. And defying all odds, the organization is struggling hard to live up to that challenge. And the harsh economic reality that even limits federal grants towards the poor has only reinforced its pledges to assist them more.