In April, Housing Families hosted our Annual Legislative Breakfast at Anthony’s of Malden. This year’s program focused on the correlation between health and housing insecurity, and our keynote speakers from the Child Equity Center at UMass Memorial Health focused on the impact of housing insecurity on children’s health.

Christi Staples, Vice President, Policy and Government Relations, United Way of Massachusetts Bay, spoke about the coalition’s legislative priorities and how the coalition can work together with the community to further housing equity in Massachusetts. 

We were thrilled to honor the Massachusetts Supportive Housing Pipeline Coalition, a collaboration of more than 80 cross-sector partners, including Housing Families. Together, we develop and advance a unified agenda for creating the Supportive Housing needed to address chronic and high need homelessness in Massachusetts.

Experts in health and housing, Arvin Garg, MD, MPH and Alison LeBlanc, MS, PMP, from the Child Health Equity Center at UMass Memorial Health discussed the impact that housing insecurity and homelessness has on children’s health.

This years’ program also included a powerful story from Wendy De Los Santos, a Housing Families client and housing advocate who faced housing insecurity due to lack of affordable housing after coming to the United States from the Dominican Republic. Wendy shared her story about how she first was a part of our shelter program and then found stable housing in our Permanent Supportive Housing program.

We are so grateful to our incredible sponsors for making the Legislative Breakfast so successful: our Presenting sponsor, Talent Retriever; Wellness sponsors: Leading Edge Real Estate, and Nickerson; Local Leaders sponsors: The Boston Foundation, Point32 Health, and Stoneham Bank; Supporting sponsors: Dom’s Sausage, Resonant Energy, Law Office of Scott Lucey, Esq, and Eagle Bank; Table sponsor: IBEW 2222; and our Floral Sponsor: Pepperberry Florist & Gift Shop.  

“It was an honor to once again sponsor Housing Families’ Legislative Breakfast which focused on the critical importance of permanent housing for everyone, and especially for the physical and mental health and wellbeing of our children,” said Patrick Cahill, president of Commercial Markets for Point32Health. “We must continue to work together to reduce the negative impacts of housing instability on health outcomes. Safe housing is simply critical for good health.”

Our annual Legislative Breakfast brings the community together to highlight the connection between health and housing and how the community can work together to address these issues. Thank you to Malden Mayor Christenson and all the other elected officials, sponsors, speakers, Housing Families staff, and everyone in our wonderful community who attended the Breakfast. We can’t wait until next year