Advocates for women in crisis.
Our Advocates help guests overcome the many barriers caused by poverty and homelessness.
WLP’s Advocacy program provides wraparound services to help women navigate a wide variety of challenges and systems including housing search and stabilization, eviction prevention, employment assistance, benefit enrollment, and resolution of legal issues. Last year, Advocates held 10,916 one-on-one meetings with 1,119 unique guests, an average of 10 meetings per guest.
Housing
Preventing homelessness is the central objective of WLP’s work, and Advocates provide the expert assistance necessary to successfully apply for and ultimately secure permanent housing. Within WLP’s case management services, Advocates also facilitate primary, specialty, and behavioral healthcare access and follow-up on treatment plans. WLP provides emergency funding to women at urgent risk of losing their homes or those in unsafe or substandard housing.
Advocates help guests search for housing, apply for subsidies, and arrange visits to prospective housing units. They explore options for guests to address arrears, unpaid utilities, and security deposits. They assist guests with referrals to and coordination surrounding furniture banks and movers. WLP has developed partnerships with public and private housing agencies which are essential to unearthing every opportunity to find safe, affordable, and stable homes for guests. In the past fiscal year, Advocates filed over 2,776 housing applications and helped 293 women secure housing or prevent eviction, including 55 women housed from homelessness.
Stabilization
Advocates’ work does not end once a guest has secured housing; WLP’s goal is for all guests to achieve independence and reach their full potential. For women overcoming chronic homelessness, the period just after being housed is a critical time when they benefit greatly from continued support. In 2020, WLP implemented a Housing & Stabilization program that capitalizes on a relational approach and uses Critical Time Intervention, an evidence-based practice that mobilizes support for individuals during this transition period.
The Housing & Stabilization program provides everything that a newly housed woman may need to smooth the transition into housed life. WLP ensures that she has appliances, furniture, groceries, and cleaning supplies as soon as she moves in. Her Advocate walks around the neighborhood with her, pointing out transit stops and resources including grocery, library, and public spaces, and connecting her with community groups at churches, elder services, and other neighborhood gathering places. WLP’s full-time attorney ensures that she has protection from predatory landlords and no-fault evictions.
Providers across the City recognize WLP as a safe, gender-specific, welcoming community and a reliable stabilization provider for marginalized women. Whether discharging vulnerable medical patients or assisting mothers with substance use disorders, partners count on WLP to source dignified housing opportunities and provide specialized post-housing care and support.
Since the inception of the program in July 2020, WLP has housed 202 women from homelessness and enrolled them in stabilization services. A remarkable 195 women (97%) have remained in their homes. All WLP Advocates are trained to view their clients’ cases through a clinical lens to build trust in the process. However, because mental health and addiction issues play such a key role in stabilization, WLP created a new position in partnership with Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), a Behavioral Health and Stabilization Clinician, who is tasked with addressing and improving the mental health of women in the program.
Due to this success, especially with clients previously determined to be unfit for long-term housing, demand for WLP’s stabilization services has risen. Referrals are streaming in, and WLP is scaling its team accordingly, hiring new Advocates and creating partnerships to meet the increased need.
Legal Services
The American Civil Liberties Union has reported that:
In 2023, there were 38,863 eviction cases in Massachusetts. While 90% of landlords had legal representation, only 3-4% of tenants who faced eviction had representation.13
Evictions contribute to a cycle of poverty that frequently results in homelessness and harms communities. Evictions can lead to job loss and long-term damage to the physical and mental health of those who are evicted, and severely constrict housing choice and accessibility in the future.
In New York City, 84% of represented renters facing eviction have remained in their homes. In Cleveland, 93% of represented renters avoided an eviction.14
In response to increasing demand for assistance with complex legal issues such as eviction, domestic violence, benefits, divorce, child custody, and immigration, WLP has expanded its services to include a full-time attorney dedicated to supporting the community. Working with the Advocacy team, a dedicated Greater Boston Legal Services lawyer now tackles cases on behalf of WLP guests.
The attorney meets face-to-face with guests to work on a myriad of issues to ensure each person’s rights are protected––in FY24, she assisted 136 unique guests. She holds bi-weekly case management meetings with the Advocacy team and has provided invaluable advice and feedback––Advocates often check in with her throughout the week with legal questions surrounding the issues they are navigating through and on behalf of their clients. In addition, a volunteer attorney assists with triage once per week, lightening the load on the full-time attorney and adding to the efficiency of the Legal Services program.
The intervention of an attorney has been a particularly successful strategy in helping women access emergency shelter, which has prevented multiple families from being separated, as well as in preparing Advocates and their clients for victories in eviction cases. This is a significant step toward equitable justice.
Referrals and Benefits
The bureaucracy surrounding federal and state assistance or other benefits for which guests are eligible can be daunting to understand. WLP’s Advocacy team and attorney work with guests to navigate these systems, maximize public assistance, and protect their rights to services. Advocates also guide guests through referral and placement processes with medical providers, workforce placement programs, food resources, and more. Advocates made critical referrals to partner agencies for 26% of guests enrolled in Advocacy services in FY24.
The Resource and Empowerment Center is a space where––with support from talented staff, interns, and volunteers––women can access tools to advocate for themselves. WLP's programming bridges the skills gap and furnishes the tools women need to secure better jobs and increase their earning potential. Guests have free access to computers, telephones, personal voicemail, office supplies, reference materials, and a lending library. WLP’s Job Readiness Program offerings, which are free and open to all, include:
Individualized workshops on resume building, job search, and interview skills
One-on-one support with taxes, financial literacy, credit enhancement, and debt relief
Educational classes including English as a Second Language, Tech Goes Home, and Business Literacy
Legal consultation and representation from WLP’s full-time attorney focused on removing barriers to employment
Addiction recovery groups and emotional regulation sessions
WLP’s tracking of class and program participation revealed that there were 1,488 instances of participation in these groups last fiscal year, along with countless instances of one-on-one help provided by staff and volunteers. WLP defines success as any time a woman moves forward in her journey, and there have been countless instances of this since the program's inception.
These successes take many forms, such as a woman finding a new job, entering a GED class, working with WLP’s attorney to resolve a worker's rights issue, learning to use the Google Suite, setting up an online business on Etsy, learning English, or honing essential coping and emotional regulation skills to deal with a severe trauma history.
Additionally, The Susannah Waldo Wood Reading Room is a quiet space for guests to sit and read or browse for books to take with them.