After being at risk of closing by year-end because of a sudden loss of federal funding, Walker’s Point Youth & Family Center will remain open thanks to donations from the community.
The South Side center, which provides 50% of Milwaukee’s shelter beds for 11- to 17-year-olds and serves parenting teens, was forced to raise $200,000 by Dec. 31 to stay open after it was notified that its federal grant was not renewed.
Now the center’s staff is continuing to raise money for the coming years.
Audra O’Connell, the executive director of Walker’s Point Youth & Family Center, said Milwaukee’s outpouring of support has been overwhelming.
“If you would have asked me Oct. 5, I would have been crying and saying, ‘I just don’t have any hope,'” said O’Connell, referring to the date she learned of the loss of federal funding. “But today, I have 1,000% hope.”
The Milwaukee Common Council unanimously voted to award the shelter $100,000 in community development block grants to help it stay open.
An anonymous donor matched the city’s one-time grant, O’Connell confirmed.
What happened to funding?
For more than 40 years, Walker’s Point has received a $200,000 yearly grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Family and Youth Services Bureau,
The grant, given in three-year funding cycles, pays for about 25% of the budget for the center’s shelters and part of its mental health therapeutic budget. Walker’s Point is the only shelter in the Milwaukee area licensed to house parenting teens and their families, according to O’Connell.
It is also one of two state-licensed, youth-serving shelters in Milwaukee, along with Pathfinders. Of the youths served by Walker’s Point Youth & Family Center during the last three years, 48% were pregnant or parenting; 81% were youths of color; 41% were LGBTQIA+; and 60% were female.
O’Connell said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not provide a reason for denying the grant.
Services ‘desperately needed’
Sister MacCanon Brown, the president and CEO of MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary, said had the center closed, it would have added another hole in the city’s safety net for the most vulnerable populations.
This is about “the vulnerable populations left without services when the doors are closed,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, an avid supporter of Walker’s Point Youth & Family Center, said she is disappointed that the center was not selected for the funding.
“Walker’s Point Youth & Family Center has served many of my young constituents when they had nowhere else to turn, helping them live independently and providing crucial mental health services,” Moore said. “The potential closure or reduction of services would (have been) devastating because I know these services are desperately needed.”
Milwaukeeans take to social media
When news hit Meta, formerly known as Facebook, on Nov. 11 of the center’s potential closing, Milwaukeeans collected donations on the center’s behalf. A post from CBS 58 received almost 2,000 shares,, with people rallying to keep the center open.
“I have never had so much notoriety as an agency as this Facebook campaign. It has been wild,” O’Connell said. “I will say it’s made me cry a few times.
“The most beautiful thing I’ve seen is like these $5 donations, because that’s someone telling me I don’t have a lot, but I have more than these young people and I want to give what I have. I find that so beautiful.”
O’Connell said supporting Walker’s Point Youth & Family Center is recognizing that youth homelessness is a problem.
“I want people to understand youth homelessness is not new,” she said. “They are truly an invisible homelessness problem because they desperately do not want to be found.”
How to help
Community members can donate on the center’s website.
