What Does Heart for Winter Haven Even Do?

By Tabitha Keith, Director of Programs, Heart for Winter Haven

I had a conversation recently with someone who cares deeply about Heart for Winter Haven and our work. As we talked about how others perceive our organization, she shared something she'd heard that stopped me in my tracks.

What Heart does can feel a little "fuzzy."

I understood what she meant almost immediately.

If you ask what a food pantry does, you probably already know the answer. If you ask what a homeless shelter does, that's pretty clear too. There is a defined need and a service designed to meet it.

Then there's Heart for Winter Haven.

We help families facing eviction. We help people find jobs. We teach financial classes. We match savings. We help people earn career credentials. We connect people to counseling and mental health support. We provide case management. We're investing in housing. We work with schools, churches, employers, nonprofits, government, donors, and neighbors.

So, what does Heart for Winter Haven even do?

Fair question.

The answer makes a lot more sense when you stop looking at our programs and start looking at a family.

Imagine a mother who is two months behind on rent. If all we know is that she owes $3,000 to her landlord, the problem appears fairly straightforward. She needs $3,000.

But sit across the table from her long enough and the picture usually becomes more complicated.

Maybe her car broke down three months ago, and without reliable transportation she started missing work. Her hours were reduced. She was already living paycheck to paycheck, so there wasn't an emergency fund to absorb the repair. Then the electric bill increased. Her childcare arrangement fell through. She's overwhelmed, embarrassed, barely sleeping, and hasn't told anyone how bad things have gotten.

By the time we meet her, the rent may be the emergency, but the rent isn't the whole problem.

After years of walking alongside families at Heart for Winter Haven, I've learned that housing instability rarely begins with housing. A transportation problem can become an employment problem. An employment problem becomes an income problem. An income problem without savings becomes a housing problem. Add childcare, mental health, strained relationships, or an unexpected emergency, and a family that seemed stable six months ago can suddenly be facing homelessness.

That's why our response has to look at the whole family.

First, we stabilize the immediate crisis. That may mean eviction prevention, rehousing assistance, emergency lodging, case management, or connecting the family with food, transportation, benefits, or another community resource.

Then we start asking what got them there.

What is happening with employment and income? Is transportation reliable? Is childcare keeping someone from working? Does the family have savings? How are they doing emotionally? Do they have healthy relationships and people they can call when life goes sideways? What strengths does this family already have, and what barriers are making it difficult for them to move forward?

From there, the work looks different for every family. Someone may enter Jobs for Life and pursue a better career. Another may join Faith & Finances and begin building emergency savings through Match Savings. Someone may need counseling, financial coaching, a professional credential, stronger community, or simply someone willing to walk alongside them long enough to help them believe stability is possible again.

And sometimes, after doing all of that, the problem really is housing. There simply isn't enough housing a family can afford. That's why we're also investing in housing development and acquisition as part of our strategy to end childhood homelessness in Winter Haven by 2030.

On a list, I can see how all of that might look fuzzy.

Standing beside a family, it doesn't.

It's one family. One life. One set of deeply connected circumstances.

And that distinction matters because I think there are two very different ways a community can respond to homelessness.

We can accept that homelessness will always be with us and become increasingly good at managing it. We can feed people, provide showers, offer temporary shelter, and respond compassionately once someone has lost their home. Every one of those services matters, and I'm grateful for the organizations that provide them.

But I don't believe we can stop there.

I don't believe homelessness is simply something communities have to learn to manage. And I certainly don't believe we can reduce people experiencing homelessness to the idea that they simply chose it. Years of sitting across the table from families have made it impossible for me to see the issue that simply.

If we want fewer children to experience homelessness, we have to get curious about everything that happens before a child loses their home.

We have to ask why the eviction happened. Why the job was lost. Why there were no savings. Why transportation failed. Why the parent couldn't increase their income. Why there was no one to call. And then we have to be willing to work on those things too.

That's what Heart for Winter Haven does.

We aren't trying to become the best organization in Winter Haven at managing homelessness. We're trying to help Winter Haven become a city where fewer families become homeless in the first place, and where families who do experience crisis have a real pathway toward stability and flourishing.

That requires more than one program. It requires churches, employers, schools, nonprofits, government, landlords, donors, neighbors, and families themselves. It requires immediate assistance and long-term development. It requires housing and employment, financial stability and healthy relationships, opportunity and community.

It might never fit into a tidy little box.

But neither do people.

And maybe that's the simplest way I know to explain what Heart for Winter Haven does: we look at the whole picture because we care about the whole person.

One Step to Take This Week

Think about a problem in our community that you care deeply about. Maybe it’s homelessness, hunger, unemployment, addiction, loneliness, or something else entirely.

Instead of only asking, “How can I help?” try asking one more question:

“What keeps causing this, and what would it take to change that?”

Sometimes the most meaningful work happens when we’re willing to look beyond the immediate need and get curious about the whole picture.

At Heart for Winter Haven, that’s the kind of city we’re working toward: one where we don’t simply respond to crisis, but work together to create the conditions where more people can flourish.

What might change in Winter Haven if we stopped seeing people as problems to solve and started seeing the whole person?