Path Home’s mission is to empower homeless families to get back into housing and stay there. Our services for families include homelessness prevention, trauma-informed shelter, helping families move back into permanent housing, and providing long-term support to help families keep their housing. 

• Shelter & Rapid Re-Housing: Families call 2-1-1, our county-wide coordinated entry point to the homeless family system. On that call, families will be asked a vulnerability assessment to determine their level of need. Based on need, families will be placed in queue for shelter or in the Family Priority Housing Pool. Once there is an opening in shelter or rapid re-housing, families are contacted and invited to participate in services.

• Homelessness Prevention: Our Prevention Program offers one-time or short-term assistance to help families at risk of losing their housing. Applications can be found on our website and can be submitted anytime. Applications will be considered for the next round of assistance. Path Home offers two rounds of assistance per month; one at the start of a month and one mid month. If Path Home receives more qualified applicants than our Prevention Program can support then families are selected at random from the pool of qualified applicants until we reach capacity. Families can find information and application instructions here. They can also contact the Prevention team directly by emailing prevention@path-home.org.

Unfortunately, there is more demand for services than we have resources for, so families can wait 3-6 months on the 211 queue before being invited in for services. We prioritize families based on need - those with the most need get served first. It’s still a long wait. 

Families can stay up to 4 months (120 days) in shelter and the average shelter stay is 106 days. Once a family has received services from Path Home, they are always part of the Path Home Village. We form long lasting, trusting relationships with families so they know we are a resource if they ever need us again.

Kids who lose their housing have a few options:

1) they can stay in the school they have been attending and the school district is required to provide transportation to and from school, wherever the student is staying;

2) if a family enters shelter, they can also choose to enroll them in the shelter’s local school;

3) kids are also welcome to attend Community Transitional School. All school districts have Homeless Liaisons that work with students who don’t have a permanent residence. Path Home has been impressed with the care and attention these Liaisons give to families in shelter. 

Path Home is a founding member of the Multnomah County Homeless Family System of Care, which is a collaboration of nine agencies that work together to help address family homelessness in our community. Our Homeless Family System partner agencies include NAYA Family Center, El Programa Hispano, IRCO, JOIN, Human Solutions, NARA, Latino Network, and 211Info. We also collaborate with Community Warehouse, Raphael House, Urban League, Morrison Child & Family Services, YWCA, Oregon Tradeswomen, Stone Soup, Impact Northwest, the Oregon Symphony, and many more organizations. Path Home is a member of the Oregon Housing Alliance and the Nonprofit Association of Oregon.