Our Story
The Hope Movement
On a given night, more than 160,000 US families are homeless. In most of the country, those families are separated, but Bloomington is different. Our community’s values dictate that no local family will sleep outside, live in a car, or be separated from one another in order to be safe. New Hope for Families is the embodiment of those values. Every day, we work to be sure that every child in our community has a safe place to sleep with their family.
Our mission
New Hope for Families provides shelter and early learning programs to keep families together and lift every child into a promising future.
Our vision
New Hope is leading our community’s effort to end family homelessness by building model early learning and family housing programs to empower all children and families to thrive and live with dignity.
Our history
In July 2011, a group of community leaders founded New Hope for Families (then New Hope Family Shelter), the only emergency shelter for families in Monroe County. Based on the core value that families should be able to stay together during times of crisis, New Hope accepts any family with children, regardless of marital status, family composition, or sexual identity or orientation.
Using mostly volunteer labor, the founders renovated a Bloomington Hospital property at 409 W. 2nd Street and transformed it into what would be known as the Schilling House, where New Hope was able to shelter three families at a time. In order to meet community demand, New Hope embarked on a series of additional renovations of Bloomington Hospital (and, later, IU Health Bloomington Hospital) properties, including the Kohr House at 301 W. 2nd Street in December 2012 and the Newhart House at 303 W. 2nd Street in August 2015. These three properties allowed New Hope to shelter up to seven families at a time with offices for administration and case management.
In response to the strongest unmet need of shelter families in the early years, New Hope opened its early learning program in October 2015. Serving children impacted by poverty in a mixed-income cohort, the program helps parents do the things they need to do to achieve stability for their families and gives kids the good start they deserve to be successful in school.
When it opened its doors, the New Hope Early Learning Center (then known as The Nest at New Hope) served 12 young children. In June 2016, we expanded in the newly renovated Lainey’s House at 311 W. 2nd Street with a capacity to serve 16 children and began working toward national accreditation. In 2017, we became nationally accredited by the National Association for Family Child Care and maintained that accreditation through summer 2022.
In 2022, New Hope constructed a new and expanded campus at 1140 S. Morton Street. This campus includes an early learning center that serves more than 50 young children at a time and a shelter that serves 12 families each night.
Our town
Changing the world begins at home and we are proud to be part of the diverse and caring community in Bloomington, Indiana. We believe that our work is helping to change the trajectory of lives and disrupting the cycle of homelessness and poverty in the town we love.
