Over thirty years ago, Dignity Housing’s founder and first Executive Director Alicia Christian, formerly homeless herself, had a conversation with a homeless man who explained what it was like to be without a home: “The first thing you lose is your dignity.  On the streets, in abandoned buildings, you can’t meet your basic needs in privacy or safely.”

At Dignity Housing, “home” means safety.  Home means independence. Home means pride. Home means recovery. Home means DIGNITY. Our name is Dignity Housing and we make sure everyone who walks through our doors is treated with dignity, is provided a home maintained with dignity, and receives services that help build their personal dignity.

Dignity Housing manages 58 units of transitional and permanent supportive housing and provides supportive services to residents, working to fulfill our mission of breaking the cycle of homelessness and poverty in Philadelphia.

Dignity’s housing ranges from efficiency apartments to three-bedroom houses. Our property management team of staff cares for the properties by performing ongoing maintenance repairs and hiring experienced contractors when needed. Every unit has a kitchen with standard appliances and our program for domestic violence survivors is fully furnished. For homeless families and individuals, moving into a Dignity unit is often the first time in months or years that they have a safe place to sleep at night, without the stress of where they will sleep tomorrow. Many of the residents at Dignity Housing are fleeing domestic violence or recovering from substance addiction.

As one resident said, “The feeling of waking up in my own home is a feeling I have not felt in a long time.  It is amazing to be able to have a place to call my own.”