Cleveland Building Transitions to Safety

It is hard to imagine what the owners of Cleveland's abandoned 76-room TraveLodge motel must have thought when Sister Loretta and Sister Donna announced that they wanted to buy what they called a "notorious cathouse." "Sister Donna and I had about $1.98 between us," recalls Sister Loretta. But the two nuns of the Sisters of St. Joseph had other assets, acquired during years of working to help the poor against heavy odds, that they leveraged into a remarkable deal. They managed to raise the $270,000 purchase price from banks, churches, government organizations and James Rouse's Enterprise Foundation -- plus an additional $400,000 for renovations. From that unlikely beginning was born Transitional Housing Inc. (THI), a way station for women traveling between emergency shelters and permanent homes.

The nuns knew that many homeless women have trouble moving directly from a shelter into a place of their own, even if apartments are available -- and affordable. A few months on the streets can leave a person deeply alienated and frightened of returning to "normal" life. Through self-esteem seminars, employment training, drug counseling and other programs, women are prepared to return to the job market, retrieve children from foster care and set up homes.

More than 400 women have stayed, usually for about 13 months, since THI opened its doors in 1986. Roughly 65% of the cases involved alcohol and drug use, while 85% of the residents had been physically or sexually abused. This halfway house was their first experience of safety -- and for many, of responsibility as well. "This place saved my life," says Lynn Morozko, who sells her plasma and works at a women's shelter while earning a degree in design engineering. "A lot of people think homelessness is a type of social Darwinism," she says. "But it isn't stupid people who are homeless. It's that we hit walls that we can't get over by ourselves." Fortunately, Transitional Housing is perfecting the art of building ladders.