Returning to campus to study theology, she co-founded in 2003 the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker, two community houses of lay men and women that welcome guests off the street to live with them.

Three years later, responding to witnessed needs, St. Peter Claver opened Our Lady of the Road, a day center where anyone can take showers, do laundry, and have breakfast Fridays through Sundays. When the pandemic hit, a huge tent encampment went up in downtown South Bend, and the people there lacked access to water and sanitation. Our Lady of the Road donors raised money to move the tent dwellers into empty motels, an effort that became Motels4Now.

Please email admin@newdaysouthbend.org if you would like to learn more about volunteering opportunities or have a specific idea of how your group could assist.

We also frequently accept medical and social work professional interns – if you have this skill set or are studying in these areas and would like to volunteer, please email admin@newdaysouthbend.org

• Our Lady of the Road (OLR): Established in 2006.

• Motels4Now Program (M4N): Launched in 2020 as a housing program of OLR.

New Day Intake Center (NDIC): Incorporated in 2023 as M4N becomes its own nonprofit.

• You are welcome to sign-up for our waitlist during intake at Our Lady of the Road every week between 8 am and 10 am on Friday morning. Hot breakfast is available at this time. After you are added to our waitlist, we encourage you to continue to check in with us until a bed becomes available for you. Once you are admitted to our program, you will have access to our suite of wraparound services including housing support to assist you with voucher and rental applications.

• If you are in need of immediate shelter, please seek admission to Weather Amnesty at Center for the Homeless at 8PM every night from November-April.

• If you are seeking shelter for a minor, please visit Hope Ministries, Center for the Homeless, Youth Services Bureau, as these agencies provide shelter to people under 18.

Chronic homelessness refers to someone who has experienced prolonged and/or repeated instances of homelessness. People experiencing chronic homelessness often struggle with addiction, a severe mental health disorder, and/or disability that prevents them from accessing a traditional homeless shelter.

Homelessness, also referred to as situational homelessness, describes someone who is forced to live without housing due to a life-altering event such as job loss, death of a caretaker, domestic violence, medical emergency, or natural disaster.

Traditional shelters often involve barriers to accessing housing. Housing First refers to the practice of providing housing along with wraparound services to assist a person in securing and maintaining permanent housing. This approach has been empirically proven to be effective, and M4N has a 77% success rate.

An intake center uses a process designed to help staff quickly identify, assess, and connect people to housing and support resources. The approach helps people access housing faster while providing them with correct information about the other types of support needed. 

New Day Intake Center provides housing for families whose members are at least 18 years of age.

Our approach recognizes the critical benefit of stability in basic needs such as food, clothing, bathrooms, and shelter in order for an individual to access care and address mental illness and/or substance use disorder. 

Guests are connected with an onsite psychiatrist who diagnoses and treats various mental health conditions, including substance use disorders.

Our community mental health partner, Oaklawn, provides onsite Peer Support Professionals who lead guests in conversations

about addiction recovery and offer additional mental health support.

New Day Staff support guests in recovery by providing daily transportation to recovery clinics to access medication and resources for recovery.

New Day Intake Center does not require guests to complete drug testing to access housing and support services. 

• We develop relationships of trust with our guests

• Primarily, we do not allow violence or threats of violence, and we ask our guests not to host people who are not part of the program. Our baseline is maintaining a reasonably peaceful environment within which people can begin to heal and move towards permanent housing.

NDIC takes numerous precautions to keep guests safe. 

• Staff remain on campus 24/7.

• Unauthorized visitors are not permitted on the property.

• Security systems have been installed around the property. Our new purpose-built facility will have a secure perimeter and CCTV camera system, in addition to 24/7 staff presence.

• Police regularly patrol the area around the property during the day and night.

We maintain internal policies and procedures for addressing situations, and our staff is trained in de-escalation and intervention to ensure that we are providing a stable, safe, and secure environment for our guests, community partners, and staff, to operationalize our values of Nonviolence, Constructiveness, and Accompaniment in praxis

Our Housing Team works with guests to secure housing vouchers, complete housing applications, and communicate effectively with landlords. Following guidance through the rental and voucher application process, our housing team accompanies guests in their new housing, providing continued rental, utilities, and pest-control assistance, and ensuring effective communication between former guests in our program and their new property managers. On-average, our housing team is directly supporting 150 former guests, now living in their own permanent housing.

Many of our guests have already passed retirement age or have disabilities that qualify them for government assistance programs.

NDIC receives funding from the city of South Bend, state and federal government grants, and ongoing fundraising efforts.

Summer 2025

The City of South Bend has made the following commitments:

-purchase and donation of current Motels4Now location

-purchase and donation of Old Cleveland Road site for new facility

-$500,000 for annual operating expenses

-$4 million in capital support

-$3.4 million HOME ARP grant: The City has filed this application to support construction of the non-congregate wing of 30 single units and the main administrative and service building

This is a misinterpretation of Jesus. He invited the disciples, and continues to invite us, to walk with one another. This quote is not an invitation to sit back and accept the reality of poverty as a given; rather, the life of Jesus offers us a challenge to notice those most in need and respond with compassion. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus reveals that the neighbor is “The one who treated him with mercy” and calls upon us to “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). Jesus himself gave his life for us, who are sinners, by dying on the cross to save us (Matthew 27:50). We are thus called and challenged to give our lives for others. Matthew 25:31-46 makes it abundantly clear that the way we treat the poor is the way we treat Christ. It is simply not an option to ignore the poor, because in doing so, we are ignoring Christ in disguise.

Proverbs 19:17 summarizes it well: “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.”

• It is more than helping people, it is also helping the community.  Here is the broader impact:

• Financial

• Cost of county jail vs motel (56 vs 39)

• Health care / emergency room costs?

  • Lucy Institute?

    • Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and Beacon Memorial Family Residency Health Equity Data Study, (2023-2025): This study focuses on measuring the rate of ER usage and hospitalization among our guests who are patients of our on-site Beacon Street Medicine Clinic. Now at the halfway point of a 2-year study, the current data indicate a 60% reduction in the need for ER care among the guests in our program.

  • Average Cost of ER Visit in Indiana: $1,610

• Police calls for service before and after Motel

• Impact on businesses

• (clear simple stats)

With a purpose built facility with a secure perimeter, we would anticipate even fewer calls.

Letter from Willow