Our Family Services, Inc.

Our Family's mission is to eliminate homelessness and strengthen our community. We do this by providing stability in times of crisis, linking people to support and resources, supporting social connectedness, and engaging our neighbors to tackle tough community issues.

Strengthening and supporting the Tucson community is integral to Our Family's vision of making our community a better place to live, to grow up, and to grow older.

We are a dynamic multi-service organization with a rich history of service in Southern Arizona. Last year, Our Family served over 3,500 Southern Arizonans. With thousands in our community still struggling, the need for Our Family is greater than ever.

Our Family is the backbone of our community's safety net for homeless youth and families, offering safe, stable homes for nearly 250 homeless children, youth, and parents each night. Our Family provides emergency shelter for families, couples, and singles; helps homeless and near-homeless youth 18-24 stay in school and gain the skills they need through case management, counseling, education and career planning, housing, and help with basic needs; integrated housing resources for families, couples and individuals who are homeless; 20-bed brief-stay shelter and family reunification services for youth ages 12-17; and Safe Place, a community program where organizations and businesses team up to create a network of places where youth in crisis can get immediate help. Our continuum of care helps homeless children, youth and families into safe, stable housing and on to independent lives.

In addition to these services for homeless youth and families, we strengthen our community by providing behavioral health services and counseling, community-wide information and referral services, conflict mediation, opportunities for non-violent communication and training, and a wealth of services to help elders age with independence, dignity, and well-being.

Our Family was formed through the merger of Family Counseling Agency and Our Town Family Center in 2005. Since that time, two additional organizations have come under the Our Family umbrella of programs – Information and Referral Services in 2009, and New Beginnings for Women and Children in 2012. Our services date back to 1953 and together, these programs have almost 150 years of combined experience serving Tucson and surrounding Pima County.

Our Family has approximately 70 employees and an active corps of volunteers. We are licensed as a behavioral health care provider by the Arizona Department of Health Services and as a child welfare agency by the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

In partnership with the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness, Our Family offers an integrated point of entry for individuals, couples, and families experiencing homelessness in Pima County. With one phone call, individuals in need of assistance can access shelter, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and permanent housing services offered at Our Family and approximately 30 other community programs.

Our Family participates actively in the United Way's ELDER Alliance and is a founding member of the End of Life Care Partnership. The ELDER Alliance is a change network that supports a strong system of services for the increasing numbers of older adults in Pima County, to enable them to stay healthy, active and have quality of life through the aging process.

Our Family is a recognized leader in the Tucson community's efforts to end youth and family homelessness. We work with a wide network of community partners to help meet the social, educational, financial, health, and housing needs of the children, youth, and families we serve.
Recent accomplishments include:
2016 & 2017: Named One of 50 Best Nonprofits to Work For in the United States (Nonprofit Times)
2014: Re-accredited by the Council on Accreditation
2013: Opened 20-bed shelter for homeless teens
2013: Transitioned 25-year old shelter for homeless women and children from single site shelter to a scattered site community-based model working in partnership with local apartment managers to lease emergency apartments for homeless families in their own neighborhoods
2012: Merged with New Beginnings for Women and Children
2005: Our Family Services formed through the merger of Our Town Family Center and Family Counseling Agency

For the past thirty years, Our Family has provided family shelter and housing at a few centralized properties including a family shelter facility. Much like similar shelters across the nation, this model helped just over one in three families achieve permanent housing stability. While this is not an uncommon impact for family shelters, we believed we could do better and in 2013, we began transitioning all of our shelter and housing programs to scattered-site models in which families are able to live in their very own apartments rather than one large shelter facility. Today, homeless families receive housing and services in their own neighborhoods. They remain close to their places of employment, their children's schools and daycare providers, and other community ties. Their children are able to avoid uncomfortable and often traumatizing shelter environments and, most importantly, have a home like any other child's. Almost immediately, families' success rates began to skyrocket with this change. Approximately 75% achieve financial self-sufficiency and permanent housing stability through these programs today, more than doubling the success of the group shelter approach. What's more, these outcomes are being achieved at a fraction of the cost of traditional shelter and transitional housing properties.

Our Family has made tremendous progress toward our goal of ending youth and family homelessness in Pima County, but the continued need is great and there is much that remains to be done. With dozens of homeless Tucsonans seeking housing assistance each month, Our Family has re-doubled its efforts to increase the availability of supportive housing for youth and families alike. We are actively engaged in community partnerships that can help us reduce duplication in the community and maximize the impact of limited community resources. We believe that we can eliminate homelessness in Tucson, and we are working with corporate, government, foundation, and community partners to move closer to that goal every day.