Joan Dawson McConnon
When Joan Dawson McConnon was in high school, homelessness was hitting an epidemic level. Living in a family rooted in commitment to others, she says she couldn’t accept that society would let people sleep on the streets.
Joan Dawson McConnon, associate executive director and CFO of Project HOME
After graduating from Penn State University with a degree in accounting, she moved around for various jobs and volunteered helping the homeless in those communities. But it was when she moved back to Philadelphia that her volunteer work reached the next level.
She started doing street outreach and met Sister Mary Scullion. The two opened a winter emergency shelter in January 1989 and ran it through Easter.
“What we learned in that winter was that many people wanted to come off the streets permanently and wanted to recover, but once they took that first step there was no permanent place, only shelter,” she says. “That really posed the question of what was the purpose. They understood they had a warm place for the winter, but it wasn’t a permanent solution for anyone. That summer we thought about what we could do that could be permanent.”
The two co-founded the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Project HOME, which focuses on more than just housing. HOME stands for housing, opportunities to work, medical care, and education. And for the past almost 28 years, it has been tackling homelessness in this holistic manner.
“We continue to stay rooted in HOME, and every day take a step, two steps, whatever we can to drive those services with the intent that we want to be the first major city to end chronic homelessness in our country,” says McConnon, who serves as the nonprofit’s associate executive director and CFO.
Project HOME has an active year ahead. Its 2415 North Broad Street development is expected to be completed this summer and will provide 88 units of affordable housing for the city. It also plans to start construction this spring on a 30-unit affordable housing development that will be LGBTQ-friendly for young adults.
It also will continue to deepen and broaden its work to get veterans and other formerly homeless individuals back into the workforce. In addition, it’s expanding its health-care initiatives to tackle the opioid epidemic in the community and looking at ways to enhance its college access, K-8, and teen programs.
“People do come off the streets and thrive permanently. This is solvable. If we can garner the political will and the moral will, we could end this, no doubt in my mind,” she says. “We know the solutions, we know what it takes. We have witnessed it every year over the last 28 years. We do not have to have people living on our streets, the way it’s happening today. It’s still unacceptable to me.”
