United Way grant paves way to build new Holy Family Shelter

Bill Bickel looks at the site that will become the new Holy Family Shelter, a $4.6 million project that is scheduled to be completed by spring of 2009 at Holy Trinity Parish on the west side of Indianapolis. Bickel is the director of Crisis Relief and Shelter Services for Catholic Charities Indianapolis.

By John Shaughnessy

The bad news usually arrives twice a day for Bill Bickel.

Once in the morning and once in the afternoon, Bickel receives an electronic message telling him about the availability of open spaces for five Indianapolis shelters that serve the homeless.

“It’s typically full, full, full, across the board,” says Bickel, the director of Crisis Relief and Shelter Services for Catholic Charities Indianapolis. “It’s the situation we face nearly every day.”

So he was thrilled when he recently received the good news that United Way had made a $1 million matching grant to help build a new Holy Family Shelter—a shelter that will increase the number of homeless families it can serve while also increasing the number of services it can offer those families.

“It’s going to allow us to serve between 30 and 35 families,” Bickel says. “Now, we can serve 22. We’ll also have ample room to provide the services they need because the new building will have child care, a classroom, a homework room and a resource room.”

As he talks, Bickel stands on the future site of the shelter, which will be located on the grounds of Holy Trinity Parish on the near west side of Indianapolis. He notes that two buildings on the grounds will be torn down before the construction of the new $4.6 million shelter begins, scheduled for spring of 2008. Archdiocesan officials hope the shelter will be completed by spring of 2009.

“Catholic Charities, along with the entire Catholic community, is very grateful to the United Way for this tremendous show of support for this important ministry to the homeless in our community,” says David Siler, the executive director for Catholic Charities and Family Ministries for the archdiocese.

“This gift is very significant. It ­represents nearly a quarter of the cost for the building of a new shelter, and will allow us to be able to provide this very necessary service for many more years to come.”

Bickel also shares blueprints of the new two-story structure that will attach to Holy Trinity Church. It will replace the current shelter that was a former convent at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish on the near south side of Indianapolis.

“Twenty-three years later, we’re still using the same bathrooms that the nuns used when it was a convent, but we’re using them for 22 families,” Bickel says, citing one of the reasons for the new shelter.

The dining room at the present location often served as the only meeting space to help residents at the shelter. Shelter staff recall one day when the dining room was simultaneously used for a health screening fair, a meeting between a family and a lawyer, and a meal for a new family that had just entered the shelter.

The new facility will provide more ­services and more classroom, storage and recreational space for the families in need.

“These related services will assist our families [to] achieve employment, address mental health and substance abuse issues, meet educational needs, and provide ­incentives to strengthen their family,” says David Bethuram, the agency director of Catholic Charities Indianapolis.

The United Way support is made possible through a major donation from Lilly Endowment Inc., specifically for the capital needs of United Way affiliated agencies, officials note.

The United Way contribution shows how the shelter is a community effort, Bickel says.

“It shows we can’t do this work alone,” Bickel says. “There are a lot of people behind the scenes that these homeless ­people will never meet, but they’re ­instrumental in seeing them become self-sufficient and permanently housed.”

The archdiocese is committed to that goal, Siler says.

“Our ministry to the homeless is core to the mission of Catholic Charities, which finds its roots in the Gospel of Jesus Christ when he told us that when we shelter the lost, we shelter Christ himself,” Siler says.

“We have provided this support to ­thousands of families over the years. This support from United Way will allow us to continue to provide this service in a facility much more suited to the needs of our ­families.” †