Catholic convent to house homeless families (VIDEO)

Phyllis Ervin sat on the steps of the St. Anthony Family Shelter with her four daughters as they looked out on the tree-lined brick street Thursday morning. That shelter’s been their home for the past two weeks while she and her four daughters wait to go back to Greenville, Miss. on Wednesday.

“I’m just glad they had space and that we were able to come in because, as you can see, I have a big group,” said Ervin, as she sat with her daughters making arts and crafts in the shelter’s playroom. A crisis last week left them homeless, she said.

The shelter turns away an average of 50 families per month because of lack of space.

Catholic Charities, which runs the St. Anthony Family Shelter and Harbor House, a domestic violence shelter, hopes to help more families with its newest venture.

The Sisters of St. Joseph, a convent at 3700 East Lincoln Street, is handing over its 100-year old building to house homeless families in Wichita. The shelter will be called the Mount and will partially open in October or November. By the time the final phase is finished in 2018, it will have room for up to 150 residents.

“Many people are living paycheck to paycheck and when that paycheck is gone, or an illness happens, a death happens, or domestic violence happens, we see them here,” Erica Davis, program director for St. Anthony Family Shelter, said. “They’re people just like you and me,” she added.

The shelter

A dwindling congregation at Sisters of St. Joseph prompted the sisters to find a better use for the space.

“We wanted to help those who are vulnerable,” Margaret Nugent, center coordinator for Sisters of St. Joseph, who lives in the convent, said. She added, “We wanted to help those that are less fortunate than we are.”

Right now, 75 sisters live in St. Joseph, but Nugent said the convent could house 130 to 150 sisters.

“The type of life that we live, I guess, is not as appealing,” she said. “A lot of people are willing to commit for a year or two. But for us, this is a lifetime commitment.”

After the sisters chose to convert their sacred home into a homeless shelter, the group partnered with Catholic Charities for the project. The two have worked together for the past three years and began intensively working on the project a year-and-a-half ago.

“I believe it will be taken care of,” Nugent said of the building. “Maybe not in the same way we have taken care of it, but this is going to be for families, and we want it to be a home.”

Nugent said the Sisters of St. Joseph housed an orphanage on the top floor of the monastery in the early 1900s, and said many of the sisters have spent their lives teaching or working in the health care industry. Nugent taught for 52 years in Kansas, Texas and California, ending her career as principal of St. Anne’s School in Wichita.

The need

In addition to the 50 families St. Anthony Family Shelter turns away each month, Harbor House also turns away 130 domestic violence victims per month because of lack of space, according to Catholic Charities.

Michael Burrus, executive director of Catholic Charities, emphasized the need for more inclusive shelters, using pregnant women and male victims of domestic violence as examples of underserved homeless populations in Wichita.

“Moving here to the Mount, it’s not going to solve all the problems, but it’s going to make a significant dent in it,” Burrus said.

The St. Anthony Family Shelter served 634 individuals in 2014, 603 in 2013 and 308 individuals so far this year.

The first phase will open 14 bedrooms for 21 or more residents in October or November. Another 24 bedrooms will open during the second and third phases in fall 2016 and spring or summer of 2017. The fourth and final phase will open another 20 rooms, likely sometime in 2018.

That’s a total of 58 rooms for up to 150 residents.

The convent rooms are clean, with bedding primly made and simply decorated. Right now, empty rooms are used for convent visitors or quiet reflecting areas for the sisters.

The building itself is ready for families to move in, but new buildings for the sisters to live in still need to be constructed on the convent grounds.

“We’re just spreading it out so we manage the project well and respect the sisters,” Burrus said.

Burrus said they would buy some furniture, playground equipment and a security system for the Mount.

Burrus said all three of Catholic Charities’ shelters have chapels for their guests, but services and religious affiliation are not required for any of their services.

How it will work

Initially, the Mount will serve only women and children, but will be open to men during phase three. Burrus said they plan to funnel families to the Mount from the St. Anthony Family Shelter and Harbor House in the beginning, but will accept people from other shelters later.

The Mount will provide continental breakfast every day and have kitchens and kitchenettes available for residents to use. But Burrus said the intent of the building is for residents to establish their independence, which in large part means the building will operate as a more transitional shelter than a crisis shelter, like St. Anthony Family Shelter or Harbor House.

Like the other shelters, the Mount will be staffed at all times and will provide classes about financial management, parenting, professional skills or relationship building to name a few.

Burrus said they’ve planned for funding for the operation of the Mount to come from Catholic Charities, Sisters of St. Joseph and charitable gifts.

Each family can stay at The Mount for up to 90 days, but because the shelter is designed as a pathway to permanent housing, shelter workers will evaluate progress in 30-day intervals.

“We want to be helpful, but we don’t want to be enabling,” Burrus said. “We want them to be clearly moving themselves toward independence.”

This story was originally published June 12, 2015 at 12:11 AM with the headline "Catholic convent to house homeless families (VIDEO)."