Our House, Inc.

Mission: To provide transformative care to end the cycle of homelessness for families. Vision: A self-sufficient and healthy family for all. Our House opened its doors in March 1988 to offer reliable, free childcare to metro Atlanta families experiencing homelessness. The founders, a group of local community volunteers along with Reverend Joanna Adams, took notice that families experiencing homelessness were required to leave emergency shelters early every morning—despite the weather conditions, despite the health status of all family members, and regardless of whether or not they had anywhere to go. The parents of these families, mostly single mothers, were given a relatively short amount of time to secure both employment and other housing before being required to permanently leave their shelters. Moved by this hardship, the founders realized that without reliable childcare, these parents were trapped in the cycle of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. Our House founders also understood that to effectively combat homelessness, programs and services had to address the root causes of homelessness: lack of child care, lack of education, and lack of work skills among parents experiencing homelessness. Our House grew to meet these needs by offering year-round, free childcare; comprehensive support services for families; and a credential-earning job-training program. Genesis Shelter was founded in 1994 in response to an alarming upward trend in the number of new mothers leaving hospitals with their newborn babies, only to live in their cars or on the streets. Co-founders Rabbi Alvin Sugarman and Reverend Joanna Adams brought together a coalition of sixteen faith-based organizations who shared a collective mission to combat homelessness in metro Atlanta. Together, they formed Genesis Shelter, to serve these homeless newborns and their mothers. Genesis opened its doors in 1994 in a facility provided by The Temple and provided services there for ten years. In 2004, recognizing the need to expand its capacity, Genesis relocated to the shelter’s current site at 173 Boulevard, a 76-bed facility with the daily capacity to serve 18 infants and their families. In 20 years of operations, Genesis provided life-transforming services to more than 3,000 people. In 2014, Our House and Genesis Shelter merged to become one organization, serving families experiencing homelessness at two sites under the name and executive leadership of Our House. As a unified organization, we carry the legacy of an exceptional early childhood education center and emergency shelter. CAPN was founded by Nurse Practitioners in 1998 as a free healthcare clinic to serve women and children experiencing homelessness. CAPN has always been on the forefront of finding innovative solutions to meet the unique healthcare needs of families experiencing homelessness. From the beginning, CAPN’s founders realized there were many barriers that impeded those experiencing homelessness from accessing high-quality healthcare, and they set out to be different. After successfully establishing a model to provide free healthcare services to women and children living in shelters, CAPN expanded its mission to include providing care for all those in our community who were medically underserved. CAPN’s core principles include promoting healthy independence through care that is delivered with compassion and dignity. Strengthening the lives of those who have been systematically excluded is key to rebuilding communities and ending the cycle of poverty and homelessness. In July 2022 CAPN, now Our House Health, was fully integrated with Our House and will continue to provide the same nurse led essential healthcare services for more than 3,000 children and adults each year.

At Our House, we provide a pathway to stability and independence for families experiencing homelessness through access to health care, early childhood education, housing, and employment. Our interrelated programs address the root causes of homelessness and ensure every family that leaves Our House has the tools needed to achieve lasting self-sufficiency.