Churches United in Ministry

Stabilization services:services cater to single adults and families seeking relief from harsh weather conditions and support in surviving the trauma of homelessness. People can access bathrooms, showers, laundry, telephone, mail service, device charging stations, lockers, a storage room, hygiene items, first aid, and survival supplies. The aim is to provide basic necessities for human dignity, medical care, sobriety counseling, mental health support, and help finding suitable housing. Service points include the emergency shelter program for families and individuals (serving approximately 1,000 people a year); homeless street outreach (serving 200 people a year); the chum drop-in center (2,000 people a year);and the chum clinic (300 people a year).

Housing services:two locations are devoted to longer-term housing for individuals and families transitioning from homelessness. The steve o'neil apartments provides 44 units of permanent supportive housing for families with children who have experienced long-term or recurrent homelessness. Opened in late december 2014, and fully occupied by march 2015, this program offers intense professional staff services to help families rebuild their lives, youth development & 4-star parent aware early childhood programming, all within a safe environment to interact, resolve past traumas, learn new skills, and share positive experiences. Programming is based on circle of security, participatory engagement, and follow housing first, harm reduction and trauma-informed philosophies and practices. The st. francis apartments opened in 2021 and offers 39 permanent supportive housing units for elders with underlying health conditions to live and obtain supportive services. Our support staff connect residents to services for food, transportation, assistance with household chores, public benefits, and mental health and recovery services. Chum's goal is to help residents successfully transition from shelter to housing, and then maintain their housing, stabilize their health and wellbeing, and not return to homelessness. Effective october 1, 2021, the organization (chum) transferred its investment in its wholly owned subsidiary, st. francis apartments, llc to an unrelated entity. As a result of the transfer, chum concluded it no longer holds a controlling financial interest in the subsidiary and, accordingly, deconsolidated the subsidiary and recognized a loss on deconsolidation. However, chum continues to service the occupants of the apartments as the purpose of that llc has not changed even though ownership was transferred.

Distributive services:includes two food shelves (providing over 7,000 food packages to 2,500 unique households in 2023, with additional emergency shelter and unsheltered packages to 1200 duplicated individuals); mobile food drops to 8 duluth area food deserts (1630 food boxes in 2023); a food delivery program - chum2go, delivering food packages to homebound seniors, families, and those with disabilities (840 food packages in 2023).

Congregational outreach:includes faith-based organizing and advocacy at the state and local level; expanding horizons, an immersion experience to expose participants to the issues of poverty, and to opportunities for service and social justice work; and volunteer outreach and coordination for all of chum's programs (about 900 people volunteer each year, 600 regularly and 300 for special events).