St. Catherine Residence

St. Catherine Residence sits in Milwaukee's Yankee Hill neighborhood, just two blocks from the Park and Lake Michigan, and goes back to 1894 when the Sisters of Mercy founded it to help women needing safe places to live, and nowadays you'll find the building designed by F.J. Hinton in a 1950 Contemporary style with welcoming brick walls, offering 164 furnished suite-style apartments, many with shared baths and community kitchens, and the place has changed hands over the years, merging with Mercy Housing Lakefront in 2013 then moving to Hope House of Milwaukee in September 2021, but it's always kept the main idea of being somewhere steady and affordable for low-income women and families, including single mothers, girls leaving foster care, and women coming out of substance abuse programs or bad domestic situations, and there are both short-term and long-term stays, with many women using St. Catherine of Hope programs to get help paying rent or stop eviction, and there's room for up to 10 families at risk of homelessness thanks to a partnership with Milwaukee County to use the last remaining units to pull vulnerable people off the street so they can focus on getting back on their feet, and residents have access to support services like incontinence care, housing stabilization, education, job training, and community wellness programs, and there's a real sense of belonging here with a focus on helping folks make progress in life while living in a place that doesn't promise luxury, but instead offers something stable, compassionate, and supportive, and over the decades St. Catherine Residence has expanded from housing about 25 young women to nearly 200 at a time, always open to women of any faith and often serving as a first stop before moving on to permanent apartments in places like McAuley Apartments nearby, and you can find more about the property's long history in files at the Wisconsin Historical Society, but through all the changes, St. Catherine Residence stays committed to keeping people safe, included, and moving forward in Milwaukee.