Now, Luke is the CEO and Karla is the director of empowerment services of Compassion United, a nonprofit helping homeless people in the Montgomery County area, which just broke ground on the second building of its campus, Miracle City, a five-acre transitional community for homeless people.
The details
The day center is set to include:
- A commercial kitchen
- A computer room
- A medical clinic
Compassion United will partner with Interfaith Community Clinic to provide the on-site medical clinic, Redus said.
Miracle City opened in August 2022 with its first building, which offers church services every morning Monday through Friday, Redus said.
Also of note
Compassion United has 12 active staff and over 1,200 volunteers registered in its database, Redus said.
In the past 12 months, Redus said the organization has served over 19,000 plates of food, given out over 4,800 bus passes and done over 2,000 loads of laundry.
The new day center will only increase the number of people the organization is able to impact, Redus said.
“We'll be able to keep them on-site here, provide the services that they need and move them toward transition,” Redus said. “In other words, helping them find a way to live on their own.”
Redus said over the course of the past 14 years, the nonprofit has helped over 300 people who have come through its transitional program.
When Compassion United completes its next phase of more transitional homes, Redus said it will triple Miracle City’s residential capacity.
The backstory
The organization started in downtown Conroe in 2009, Redus said. In February 2019, Conroe City Council voted to convey five acres of land to Compassion United for its Miracle City campus, according to its website.
Quote of note
“I think we were kidding ourselves in the beginning, thinking that that was all we wanted to do was breakfast on the weekends,” Redus said. “We saw that even for the services that were available, there were so many barriers to access that service. ... Within about six months of handing out breakfast tacos, we figured, yeah, this is probably what our life is going to be about.”
