Neighborly help for Suffolk shelter

Last week's announced consolidation of the Norfolk-based ForKids and the former Suffolk Shelter for the Homeless is noteworthy on a number of fronts, including the fact it could help expand regional efforts to quash homelessness.

The move could easily be called a takeover, though a benevolent one. The troubled Suffolk shelter, more recently called the Center for Hope and New Beginnings, will cease operations and transfer its assets, including the family shelter on Finney Avenue, to ForKids.

With the Suffolk center in danger of closing, officials and board members had sought to partner with an experienced agency that would continue to provide services to struggling families in western Tidewater. After several discussions and a financial assessment, ForKids accepted the task.

The Norfolk nonprofit has a proven record of assisting the homeless, and it should provide a model of stability and success in Suffolk, where one is needed.

Now 20 years old, and with its roots in Ocean View, ForKids boasts an array of services: an emergency shelter, transitional housing and several permanent housing sites. The agency has helped revitalize a stretch of 38th Street in Norfolk, between Killam and Colley avenues. It also runs an after-school tutoring program.

"ForKids is everything the Suffolk shelter wanted to be when it grew up," Win Winslow, the Suffolk shelter's chairman of the board, told The Pilot's editorial board last week.

Thaler McCormick, ForKids executive director, noted that several philanthropic organizations are helping to support the consolidation, including the Obici Foundation, the Beazley Foundation, the Pruden Foundation and Birdsong Corp.

ForKids has hired the majority of the Suffolk center's seven-person staff and plans to add two city residents to its board. A Suffolk advisory committee will also be formed. Currently, families and single women at the shelter could stay only 60 days; after the merger, the shelter will accept just families, but they can stay up to 120 days.

The changes could and should provide a brighter future for the Suffolk site, which has struggled to survive in recent years. It has had five executive directors in five years and numerous shakeups among board members. A former director pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $24,000 in federal money from the shelter in 2006.

The consolidation could mean something much better. Carolyn McPherson, interim executive director, put it simply: "We're very excited about it."

Suffolk, and the region, should be, too.