What comes to mind when you think of a homeless shelter? 

There are certain images that are sure to come to mind when you think of a homeless shelter and how it operates. There are many different places out there. They may offer warm meals or a place to sleep at night, but Atlanta Mission does much more than just that. 

We want to help clients find hope and healing. Our goal here is to help empower our clients who are experiencing homelessness to give them what they need to transform their lives. 

It is our aim to meet all of these people where they are, in each of their unique circumstances, and provide services that are customized to their needs. We want to help them overcome the root cause of their homelessness, whatever that may be. 

As a community, we work together to help end homelessness, one person at a time. We do this by working with our clients to help identify what may have led to their homelessness, help them find hope and work toward a path of progress and sustained growth. 

We’ve outlined how we guide clients, step by step, through this journey of transformation. 

1. Facing Homelessness: Homelessness is often associated with material poverty, but what we’ve found is that many of our clients who come through our doors are relationally poor. This means they have little to no trusted relationships in their lives and nobody to turn to when they are in need of help. We assess each client who comes through our doors, and we refer them to internal or external services to help them find hope. 

2. Find Hope: We aim to meet basic needs first—this includes shelter, meals, showers and laundry facilities because we want to give our clients a level of stability that can create a space to help clients build relationships. After we help a client meet those basic needs, our staff assesses any other immediate needs in order to point each individual to the best next step, either with Atlanta Mission or other providers.

3. Choose Help: Our Ambassadors build relationships and trust with our clients. Once a client has trust, then they can be more open to choosing to address the underlying causes of their homelessness. They complete a comprehensive needs assessment and this helps us to figure out the next steps, either with Atlanta Mission or with another service provider.

4. Make Progress: We have a diverse homeless population, and we want to help best address each of their needs. 

Atlanta Mission uses an interdisciplinary team to execute personalized services in 5 key areas:

Each one of our clients follows a personalized service program based on their needs assessment. The goal of these services is to help clients become rooted in the community, retain employment and then one day become eligible for housing. 

5.) Sustain and Grow: After clients graduate from Make Progress, some continue to live with us while they pursue housing options, while others have found their own housing. 

At The Potter’s House and The Shepherd’s Inn, we have transitional housing available for our Sustain and Grow clients. Clients will also have a sustainable income and continue working with their Job Retention Coach. We encourage clients to maintain healthy external relationships in their community with someone they can trust. 

Clients who graduate are also encouraged to stay in touch with their counselor, advocate or other staff members as they work towards sustainable, independent living.

The journey through these steps is hard. We know this. But, we also know that through Christ sustainable growth is possible.