The Land, a local nonprofit news organization that reports on Cleveland’s neighborhoods, recently published an article about Joseph & Mary’s Home and the launch of a campaign to raise money to renovate and relocate its facility for men. To support this transformational project, the “A New Home for Healing” Campaign has a goal of raising $2.5 million. The renovation involves moving the current men’s facility to an adjacent building, at 2302 Community College Avenue, modernizing the space and making it 100 percent handicapped accessible. The renovation and relocation is expected to be finished by summer 2025.

The full text of the article is below or available here on The Land website

New campaign looks to modernize Joseph’s Home, a care facility for unhoused Clevelanders

The $2.5 million campaign would help move the facility to an adjacent building in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood

by Rachelle Miller

Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland recently announced a $2.5 million campaign to fund the modernization of their Joseph’s Home facility.

Joseph’s & Mary’s Home is the first and only medical respite care centers located in Northeast Ohio that provide medically fragile men and women a place to heal. Medically fragile persons are defined as those who have health or medical conditions that require around the clock care. The renovation involves moving the current men’s facility to an adjacent building, at 2302 Community College Avenue, modernizing the space and making it 100% handicapped accessible. The campaign has a challenge grant component, also known as a matching grant, is where an organization is committed to disperse a specific amount of money to the recipient (in this case to Joseph’s Home), based on new or private funds raised in support of a challenge (to support renovation efforts for this campaign). The challenge grant for this campaign is up to $150,000, through the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine where qualifying gifts will be matched 1:1 of up to $5,000 max per individual donor.

According to Beth Graham, executive director of Joseph & Mary’s Home, “Medical respite fills the gap between hospital and home for people who are unhoused and experiencing acute medical conditions. So people no longer need hospital level care, but they need recuperation.”

“Medical respite has grown by 40% in the last five years,” according to Graham, “with the pandemic having pointed a lot of communities in the direction of medical respite as an intervention for people who are otherwise again and on the streets and in need of a lot of care to regain their health and get connected to housing.”

Their mission is fulfilled partly through partnerships with fellow organizations, according to Graham.

“We get quite a few referrals from the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH), which is an organization that has a street outreach component. So that means they’re going to places such as tent encampments and other places where unsheltered persons are residing,” Graham said. “We are an option for anyone who is experiencing an acute medical condition and experiencing homelessness.”

Residents’ medical care is overseen daily by a nurse who can answer medical questions, provide education, check their blood pressure and more. Additionally, there is a medical director, community health workers and a case manager at the facility. Graham said, “Our case managers and peer supporters really work to develop a care plan with all of their goals, guiding that plan and connecting people to the resources to help them achieve the goals in that plan.”

Residents are not held to an end date for care, instead they stay at Joseph & Mary’s home until they are healthy enough to exit the center. Many patients at Joseph & Mary’s home are elderly, unhoused individuals who might need to be moved into hospice or nursing home care facilities.

“For people that go through medical respite, 90% of what we call alumni, remain stably housed and medically stable six months after discharge,” Graham said. The success rate of Joseph & Mary’s Home points to their overarching mission of getting people healthy and into housing. Residents of Joseph’s & Mary’s Home are referred to as alumni once they exit (leave) the center to move on elsewhere.

Joseph & Mary’s Home facilities have a lot of the comforts of home, including a kitchen, laundry facilities, dining area, a television room, arts and crafts room, bathrooms with handicap-accessible showers and toilets , and private bedrooms with a large window, and doors with locks to provide residents with an extra layer of security. Art, music, and talk therapy are all prioritized at Joseph & Mary’s Home to provide well rounded care. Some residents’ art is on display at Mary’s Home. A small outdoor garden, a grill, and an outdoor seating area give residents a way to connect with nature in a safe and manageable manner.

Founding and Growing
The Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine founded Joseph’s Home. Eight sisters working for the charity were charged with finding new ways to meet community needs.

Graham explained how Joseph’s Home was founded “The Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine founded Joseph’s Home when they were charged by the full congregation where the larger congregation of sisters charged eight sisters with finding new ways of meeting unmet community needs. One of those eight sisters was a social worker at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center. She was noticing patients returning again and again, with some returning worse than when they first started. She started meeting and talking to these patients to find out what was going on and quickly learned that those patients coming back again and again were homeless,” he said.

This revelation set in motion the creation of Joseph’s Home, then located in an old convent building. The building could only accommodate 11 private rooms, initially designed to only serve men. So in June of 2020 Joseph’s Home opened their doors to medically fragile unhoused men.

“It was really a dream long held by the sisters and our board of directors and when the pandemic hit we determined that now was the time,” Graham said.

So they embarked on a capital campaign to raise funds to renovate and open Mary’s Home. A capital campaign is a targeted effort that outlines how funds will be utilized. A capital campaign is what they are relying on again, this time to raise money to help fund the Joseph’s Home renovation.

Mary’s Home was leased in 2021, after a $1.55 million renovation, and opened its doors in March of 2022, with 10 private rooms and 8 bathrooms. Joseph’s Home is currently located in a neighboring building on the same lot with 11 private rooms. According to Graham, “What we’ve also been learning though, as we’ve been here in Mary’s Home, everything being located on one floor with wide hallways and handicap accessibility, has just been so eye opening as to how beneficial that is for the people we serve.”

Graham also explained the difference in the number of rooms between Joseph & Mary’s Home. “With the 10 rooms for Mary’s home, the way we really thought about the sizing was through a needs assessment in partnership with the women’s shelter known as Norma Herr Women’s Center and St. Vincent Charity Medical Center emergency room and Cuyahoga County Coordinated Intake,” he said.

Graham provided charts, research and graphs to visually showcase the following statistic: over a two-year period, approximately 300 women used the emergency room 937 times. Of those, 17% utilized the ER’s services five or more times. That 17% are the group that Mary’s Home serves.

“What we’ve been able to do is this past year, in 2023, we served 97 residents in both of the buildings and 143 people total in residence and in the community with our follow-up alumni services, the most in our history,” Graham said. “And we hope to continue to grow if the need is there.

“Medical respite really requires the generosity of individual donors and foundation and public sector and community members, so we’ve been really grateful for that,” Graham said.

Joseph’s Home’s relocation will allow for care to be undisturbed as renovations are underway. These renovations will include modernized building accommodations, such as handicapped accessible entryways, showers and bathrooms. The anticipated completion of the renovation and relocation is in summer 2025, and will coincide with the organization’s 25th anniversary.

You can read more about The Joseph & Mary’s Home Respite Care Campaign, a New Home for Healing here. You can donate here or view the renovation floor plan here.

Joseph & Mary’s Home is a ministry of the Sisters of Charity Health System.