Dear Friends,

We envision a community in which every family has a home.

I am honored to be leading an organization that provides such essential services to families experiencing homelessness. This is my first annual report so this message encompasses my reflection on the past three years. I joined Hildebrand in 2013, and we have been solely focused on transitions, planning, program expansion, and infrastructure building – all in the midst of what was termed a crisis in homelessness.

In 2013, Massachusetts experienced an 8 percent increase in the number of families in shelter as many factors converged to throw a record number of families into homelessness, including Boston’s high cost of living, and lack of affordable housing. I am proud of how Hildebrand rallied to respond to the increasing need for emergency shelter, and we expanded from 99 to 126 units, as over 4,000 homeless families were taken into emergency shelters across the state.

Over the past three years, we never took our eyes off the vision that every family has a home, and we re-examined our unique role in that process. To that end, we clarified the mission, and committed to a strategic direction of expanding intervention and prevention programs. The result of this work was the addition of three units of permanent housing last year, and continued efforts to grow the portfolio beyond its current eleven units. The organization made significant investments in the infrastructure as the number of staff increased from 30 to 60 employees, primarily due to the expansion of congregate living programs because families have far better outcomes with that model. Hildebrand’s congregate living programs now support 53 families who receive 24/7 on-site case management. Another 73 families reside in scattered site locations throughout the Metro Boston region. We also created a special fund (HAND Up) to eliminate one of the most significant barriers to securing permanent housing—payment of initial rents, security deposits, utility arrearage, etc. This effort helped yield placement for 73 families in 2015.

Lastly, we redesigned the website and heightened our social media presence to more effectively connect with those who support of our work. You may have noticed the new logo as well. The arrow in the “H” symbolizes continued upward movement toward ending family homelessness. Someday our vision of a community in which every family has a home will be realized, but in the meantime, it reflects the interventions (e.g. shelter) we provide until that day comes.

Check out our 2015 Annual Report to see more of the important work we do at Hildebrand.

Please join us in welcoming our new Assistant Director of Programs, Family Advocacy & Support Team, Joy Gallon! Prior to joining us at Hildebrand, Joy worked at The Edinburg Center in Lexington, MA for over a decade. While there, she worked in various capacities, but most recently she was the Director of Community Intervention Services, responsible for overseeing short-term programs providing services to people with serious mental illnesses. “The programs that I was responsible for included a short-term respite and outreach program that provided intensive mental health services to a small number of clients (up to 5 on-site clients and up to 11 outreach clients) in our service area (18 towns and cities). We met with and provided services to these clients a minimum of twice per week and up to twice per day,” she says of her time there.

In addition, she also supervised jail diversion programs in Arlington and Waltham, which provided supervision to clinicians based at the police departments in each town, and did weekly ride-alongs with the Senior Affairs Officer in Waltham. “The clinicians would assess people in the community with an officer when someone in those communities came to the attention of police due to a mental health or substance abuse concern,” Joy writes. They would then assess the person determining whether or not services needed to be provided or whether he or she needed to go to the hospital. She continues, “I also provided hoarding assessments and services to people in Waltham brought to my attention by the police or fire departments.”

When asked what experience she hopes to bring from The Edinburg Center, Joy responds, “I hope to bring a knowledge of how to provide excellent outreach services to the people we serve in the scattered sites, and […] bring my experience serving persons with mental health concerns to the team, in order to better serve our clients who are impacted by trauma, mental illness, and substance abuse concerns.” Additionally, her two main goals are to reduce the time our clients spend in shelter and move them more quickly into permanent, sustainable housing as well as bring more workshops & trainings to our clients “in order to help equip them with the tools they need to reduce the barriers to sustainable housing.”

Prior to working in social services, Joy worked in Human Resources. She was the Director of Human Resources at a small mental health provider. While there she was drawn to work with the clients that the organization provided with services. After she left that position, she began working at The Edinburg Center and went to back to school to earn a degree in Social Work; “I love working with people, and really enjoy helping to creatively resolve the complex and challenging situations that people encounter.”

Joy received her MSW from Boston University, Masters of Communications from Emerson College, and her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.