A Milwaukee youth homeless shelter will stay open in 2025 after receiving one-time city funds

A youth homeless shelter in Milwaukee will keep its doors open after it received one-time funding from the city.

The Walker’s Point Youth and Family Shelter helps runaway and homeless children and also provides emergency shelter for pregnant youth and teens with children. Audra O’Connell, the executive director of the shelter, said the organization learned in October that it did not receive an annual $200,000 grant from the federal government.

“So we knew right away, if we don’t find something to at least plug the gap of $200,000 to get us to reapplication for next year … we were going to have to make a really tough decision,” O’Connell said.

The shelter’s budget is around $850,000 per year, which largely comes from city, state and federal grants and private donations. O’Connell said it considered closing doors in 2025 because of the budget gap.

However, the Milwaukee Common Council voted to send $100,000 in community development block grant funds to the center in November. An anonymous donor also agreed to match that grant.

O’Connell said the shelter will be able to keep their doors open in 2025 because of that money.

“And it’s really because the community stepped up in a pretty substantial way,” she said. 

According to the shelter, many of the youth they serve identify as LGBTQ+ and are people of color. If the shelter had closed next year, it would have cut the number of shelter beds available for minors in Milwaukee County in half. 

“So that would have completely devastated the system in terms of making sure that there are safe places for these young people to be,” O’Connell said. 

The shelter can house up to eight people at a time. Annually, they provide emergency shelter for around 200 to 300 kids. Around 40 percent of those individuals are pregnant or are parents, O’Connell said. 

For the past two years, South Milwaukee resident Judith O’Neil has taken her two daughters to free therapy the shelter offers for children.

“It is something that we have in our community that is a home that is actually very welcoming,” O’Neil said.

The loss in federal funding comes as homelessness is on the rise across the Milwaukee area.

“It’s so vitally important that we ensure that this shelter keeps its doors open,” Milwaukee Alder JoCasta Zamarripa told WPR.

Shelter has received federal grant for years

Walker’s Point Youth and Family Shelter receives its basic center grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. O’Connell said it’s been receiving the grant for over 30 years.

She said the organization applied for the money over the summer, but didn’t learn until the fall that it didn’t get it. O’Connell contacted Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin to learn more at that time.

O’Connell said they had a grant debrief with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Baldwin’s office.

“We scored high enough to be considered fundable,” O’Connell said. “We just weren’t funded.”

“They essentially said, like, there was nothing wrong with your application,
just try again next year,” she added.

A spokesperson for the department’s Administration for Children and Families said the agency receives hundreds of applications for the grant each year.

“Unfortunately, due to the competitive nature of awards and the limited availability of funding, ACF (Administration for Children and Families ) is not able to fund all requests for funding as the number of applications exceeds the funding available,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement.

Grants for youth homeless shelters are funded through the Federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. Joli Guenther, the executive director of the Wisconsin Association for Homeless and Runaway Services, said that act is currently authorized at around $146 million per year. Guenther said that funding hasn’t been increased by Congress, even as the National Network For Youth is recommending that amount be increased to over $300 million a year.

“It’s absolutely devastating when I know that the local need is that high, and when I know that Walker’s Point has been a dedicated and involved partner for so many years, for decades, and it’s really a model agency, they are doing incredible work,” Guenther said.

O’Connell said the shelter plans to reapply for the federal grant next year.

Other homeless shelter leaders react

Pathfinders, which is the other youth homeless shelter in Milwaukee County, provides emergency shelter for around 150 to 200 youth a year. Tim Baack, the president and CEO of Pathfinders, said there’s been “historic underfunding” of youth homeless shelters.

Guest House of Milwaukee is another homeless shelter near downtown Milwaukee that serves men. Steve Bauer, the CEO of the shelter, said it was “disheartening” to learn that the shelter had lost out on the federal money. 

Homeless shelters are primarily funded through local, state and federal grants, Bauer said. 

“The question then becomes: At what point of crisis does a nonprofit organization have to meet to be able to receive the attention they need to provide the services?” Bauer said. 

A March Wisconsin Policy Forum report found there were 4,861 people across the state experiencing homelessness in 2023, a 1.8 percent increase from the previous year. In Milwaukee County, the number of unhoused people had risen from 817 in 2021 to 1,056 in 2023, according to federal data.