Hildebrand News

Every Tuesday evening of the school year at Columbia House, you will find a group of parents seated around a kitchen table, enjoying snacks and one another’s company. While the kids are busy playing with Horizons for Homeless Children’s PALs, the parents are busy having philosophical discussions posing questions such as: What defines a miracle? How does our culture influence definitions of beauty? What value does love bring to our lives? This group discussion is led by Maité Cruz Tleugabulova, a PhD candidate of philosophy from Boston University and a member of the Free Philosophy Project. The Free Philosophy Project began...

In October, we hosted our first Open House at our administrative office here in Cambridge. We were fortunate enough to have a former client come and speak about his experience. Humbled by his experience Ibrahim had given a relatively short summary of his experience before going on to explain the long-lasting affects the circumstances that led him to Hildebrand continues to have on him and his family. In short, he escaped war-torn Sudan and seven years later is now a proud homeowner, here in Massachusetts. Read his story below: Ibrahim and his family escaped war-torn Sudan as political refugees in 2010....

Before entering shelter, Esther, Wilson, and their two children, Farah and Samuel* came to Boston in the wake of the earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010. They lived comfortably in Haiti; Wilson was an engineer and they owned their own home. After a forced relocation, they were offered housing in a couple of friends’ apartment. Esther and Wilson both had temporary jobs at a candy factory, but were unable to live off this pay alone. Eventually, the overcrowded apartment made for a difficult living situation and their friends asked them to leave. During their first few nights of homelessness, the family...

Lana* was laid off in March of 2015 and became homeless in May. Before coming to Hildebrand, Lana, her husband, and their daughter were placed in Emergency Assistance shelter in Central Massachusetts. “I tried to be optimistic, I wanted to follow the rules, and to go in prepared,” she said, having meticulously read rules in order to comply with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). Unfortunately, however, her experience at her first shelter was extremely difficult and morally degrading. She was placed into a scattered site apartment in a complex with other families in either scattered site or subsidized...

Before coming to Hildebrand, Arianne* was living in the Days Inn Hotel in Methuen with four of her children. She made the choice to transfer to Hildebrand because she knew the environment was not good for her children. Five people living in the same room makes for a stressful living situation.   “At first, [my children] had a lot of questions, ‘why weren’t we living in a house?’ – they started acting up,” Arianne said of her time in Methuen. When she first came to Hildebrand she was “excited because my kids felt like they were in a home.” At the...