January 29, 2024- The Dallas Morning News- by Leah Waters
50-room, newly renovated facility of former North Dallas hotel is almost always full of families who’ve lost housing and need help, including on-site child care during job searches.
Nicole Hampton fell behind on bills last summer when she lost hours working in a Dallas ISD school kitchen and was evicted from her home. Hampton and her three sons mostly stayed in hotel rooms, sharing beds until the money ran out.
“It was very hard at first,” Hampton said. “I just wanted to do what was right by my children.”
Then last June, Hampton called Family Gateway for help and found shelter, spending months working with case managers to find stable and affordable housing. Hampton is one of many lower-income moms who found it impossible to find stable, living-wage employment and affordable child care that fits a work schedule and location demands.
To help families in crisis, a new child care center has opened at the newly renovated Family Gateway North, a 32,929-square-foot, 50-room emergency shelter for families experiencing homelessness located in a former far north Dallas motel. Dallas-based nonprofit Vogel — which has collaborated with Family Gateway since 1987 — expanded its services to the facility, including an afterschool learning center and teen programming.
Vogel provides therapeutic services to help young children and their families prevent and overcome the lasting and traumatic effects of homelessness and poverty.
Family Gateway serves as one of the few 24/7 emergency shelters specifically for families, who often have unique needs and barriers.
Once the emergency passes, Family Gateway helps clients find more permanent housing. Hampton, 34, and her boys — Reginald, 8, Ramone, 4, and Rashaud, 3 — moved into their Mesquite home this month with the support of a housing voucher.
“The kids are happy to have their own space now,” Hampton said. “We have a backyard and stuff like that. I’m so grateful for Family Gateway. They treated us like family and that is home for us.”
Inside the shelter
On a recent day at the shelter, infants and toddlers sat around a table and ate rice and beans with a teacher while their parents visited case managers, went to work or looked for a job.
Cozy classrooms, designed with soft pastel colors, open up into an attached playground with equipment made for each stage of kids’ development.
Vogel President and CEO Karen Hughes said an on-site, high-quality early childhood center at Family Gateway North will support families while actively promoting children’s cognitive, emotional and social development.
“With the growth of our region’s homeless population, it is vital that we serve all parts of our community, and partnering with Family Gateway, which shares a similar mission, offers an ideal fit to grow our services into far north Dallas and beyond,” Hughes said. “Child care continues to be a barrier for families experiencing homelessness as they search for employment and stability.”
With the $3 million renovation at the former hotel, each family has its own private space with bathrooms and kitchenettes, which are equipped with a two-burner stove, microwave, dishwasher and refrigerator.
Parents have access to shared laundry services, meeting rooms and the business center with teleconference pods for telehealth appointments and job interviews.
From 7 a.m. until 6 p.m., parents can use the child care center while focusing with case managers on employment and housing options, said President and Family Gateway CEO Ellen Magnis.
“Family Gateway operates the only emergency shelter in our community that serves all types of families and keeps them together, and we are thrilled to welcome Vogel on-site with us to provide child care and educational support for our families,” Magnis said. “Family Gateway and Vogel are both laser-focused on helping young children and their families overcome the lasting effects of homelessness.”
Shelter services
About 32 young children are enrolled in the center, which can accommodate up to 50, Hughes said. A nurse visits each Wednesday to help with the health of kids and parents.
“Child care is extremely expensive,” Hughes said, citing the barriers parents often face of accessibility, affordability and quality.
Each self-contained classroom has its own playground, bathroom and learning stations. The shelter requires two teachers for every eight infants and toddlers, and caps the age children can attend at 12.
The median annual price for enrolling an infant at a Dallas County day care center was $9,303 in 2018, or $11,033 in adjusted 2023 dollars, according to the National Database of Childcare Prices.
The Dallas Mavericks funded a playground for school-age kids, Magnis said. AT&T outfitted a high-speed computer lab, along with subscriptions to online learning tools to teach kids, and often adults, digital literacy.
Although the Family Gateway North shelter falls into the Plano ISD school zone, the district coordinates transportation for school-aged children to attend their school of origin for stability.
“Our kids have so many challenging behaviors because of the trauma there,” Hughes said.
About 25% of families who shelter at Family Gateway previously lived in their cars, and about 25% or 30% lived in a hotel, according to Magnis.
“Families come to us because they have either been officially evicted, or they’ve been threatened with an eviction,” Magnis said. “And so many families pack up and move out when they really could still live there.”
Former Candlewood Suites
Family Gateway North has housed more than 450 families since its 2021 opening. The nonprofit now operates the family shelter inside the Salvation Army and provides “diversion services” to prevent families from falling into homelessness.
“We divert them from shelter and help them in a different way,” Magnis said. “Most of what we’re doing now is trying not to bring people in if we can avoid it.”
Every room in the 50-unit, three-story shelter is full, Magnis said, adding the nonprofit pays for overflow hotels as needed and helps connect clients with relatives to avoid homelessness.
The City of Dallas first purchased the former Candlewood Suites in 2020 as part of its overall strategy to help the region’s growing homeless population during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Family Gateway’s renovation is just one part of Vogel’s continued expansion plan.
The Shops at RedBird in southern Dallas county and Vogel partnered in October to establish a day care for about 130 kids that will also provide job training and education programs for employees and children who live and work in the area.
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