Family Promise Day celebrates new future family homeless shelter in Rochester

(ABC 6 News) – Monday, Family Promise Rochester, a non-profit dedicated to helping families struggling with homelessness in the Med City, celebrated “Family Promise Day” and its new future.

The celebration took place at Family Promise’s North Star house, which houses three families that need a temporary place to stay. People were invited to the home for root beer floats, bean bag tournaments and a DJ from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.

This comes almost one week after Olmsted County decided to move forward in a partnership with Family Promise in the hopes of opening another home in the community.

While Family Promise Day was actually proclaimed by former Mayor Ardell Brede back in 2018, Family Promise Executive Director Erin Sinnwell says that it has never been physically celebrated.

Sinnwell says that she hopes there will be an even bigger celebration come this time next year.

“We’re excited to be able to help more families at a time. Here we can have three families in the shelter and at the possible new location, we will have between 8 to 12 families,” Sinnwell said. “So, it’s just exciting to help more people as our waiting list keeps growing.”

According to Sinnwell, in years past there were typically around 10 families on the waiting list at any given time but this year, that number skyrocketed to 25 to 30 families needing shelter.

While the partnership between Family Promise and Olmsted County has been solidified concerning a new, bigger shelter in town, the budget framework has not.

Sinnwell says that she and the finance committee will be meeting this Thursday to decide on cost estimates for the new shelter.

Family Promise relies heavily on donations and encourage people to drop some off if they are able. Sinnwell says the non-profit is in need of items such as paper towels, toilet paper, hand soap and pillow cases. These can be dropped off at any time.

Tuesday, the Panera located at 3780 Market Place Drive NW, will be raising money for Family Promise. From 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. 20% of all sales will be donated to the non-profit. All you have to do is use FUND4U at the online checkout, in the Panera App or at the kiosk in-café.