History of the Elizabeth Stone House
The Elizabeth Stone House (ESH) was founded in 1974 as a residential alternative to institutionalization for women with mental illness. In 1978, we opened a domestic violence shelter, and in 1988, we opened a transitional housing facility. Wrap-around support services, which were provided to all Elizabeth Stone House residents as part of their programs, were opened to neighborhood residents as well in 1995. A Parent-Child Center opened in 1997, financial literacy classes were first offered in 1998, and job search classes were added in 2009.
The Elizabeth Stone House has a long history of innovation. When we opened 37 years ago, mentally ill women were often consigned to institutions where conditions could be inhumane. The Elizabeth Stone House provided an alternative. We built the first transitional housing program in the United States for women affected by domestic violence, mental illness, and substance abuse, and we won the United Nations Award for Excellence as a result. Our domestic violence shelter was among the first in the nation to encourage survivors of domestic violence to bring their children into shelter with them, and we blazed another trail by accepting teenage boys when few other shelters would. We opened our parenting and financial literacy classes to men in 2007. Two years later, we opened the doors of our shelter to transgender women and welcomed our first transgender resident that year. In 2011, we welcomed our first male resident into the transitional housing program.
Since our founding, the world around us has changed. In particular, the institutions for which we were an alternative – large mental health facilities that could be warehouses for the mentally ill – have largely ceased to exist; the people, though, are still with us. Today, the danger they face is no longer institutionalization. Many of the people who would have been institutionalized in the past are now found in jails, on the streets, or couch surfing. As a result, the Elizabeth Stone House is no longer an alternative to institutionalization. It has become an alternative to homelessness.