WHO WE ARE
Creating New Opportunities for Philadelphia’s Returning Citizens
What does it say about our society that more than nine out of ten people who live on our streets have been diagnosed with at least one behavioral health challenge? What does it say that over a tenth of people entering our jails and prisons had been homeless in the months prior to their incarceration? What does it say that we spend more tax dollars on holding people in our jails than we do on nearly any other public function?
It says that as a community we are failing our neighbors. We are failing people who struggle daily with debilitating mental illnesses, people who suffer from years of emotional abuse, and people who are physically unable care for themselves. We often walk past them on the street, but even then we fail to make eye contact.
Redemption Housing is a point of connection. It is our community’s attempt to invite people on the margins back into the fold. We are about relationships. We are about freedom. We are about transforming lives in brotherly love.
Redemption means “to free someone from bondage.” Addiction, abuse, homelessness, and incarceration are all chains that hold people down. Redemption Housing breaks these chains, addressing the needs of the whole person to bring physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom.
Redemption Housing is currently working to purchase a West Philadelphia property to serve as the location of Barnabas House, a recovery home specifically designed as an encouragement and support for returning citizens. Barnabas House will be the ministry’s flagship program, as we seek to address recidivism in treating its residents with the dignity, compassion, and attention they deserve. We believe that this place of reentry will become a model for churches and faith-based community organizations in how to connect with Philadelphia’s often abandoned population of returning citizens.
Click here to read more information on our fundraising goals for this project.
“Put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and full redemption.” Psalm 130:7
