Newsmakers: Interfaith Outreach Sees Rents Account for 58 Percent of Client Budgets
Kevin Ward, executive of Interfaith Outreach, says the Plymouth nonprofit is seeing clients who are paying as much as 58 percent of their income toward rent.
“Then there’s not enough there to pay some of the other living expenses,” said Ward. “So we’re seeing families be very resilient and creative by coming to our food shelf, leveraging other services to create a little cushion in their budgets.”
Ward says the nonprofit, like other nonprofits, is also seeing an increasing number of families visit their food shelf for the first time.
Interfaith Outreach Sleep Out Campaign begins
Interfaith Outreach’s annual Sleep Out Campaign is underway until Dec. 11.
“For 27 years we’ve been doing Sleep Out in our community of creating awareness and information around what does [homelessness] look like in the western suburbs,” said Ward. “We don’t necessarily see encampments and people sleeping in their tents.”
Ward says this year the nonprofit is creating awareness around homelessness in the suburbs and the causes that lead to it. People are encouraged to sleep out in tents or cardboard boxes or just use the opportunity to learn more about homelessness.
“We are really putting the responsibility on our community to decide how they want to engage in the Sleep Out. What’s most meaningful and reflective for them to understand the challenge of a lot of our neighbors,” said Ward.
To learn more about the Sleep Out, click here.
The Sleep Out Campaign runs through Dec. 11.
