Faith House Provides Support

By Guy Fletcher

In 2022, Maggie Bienefeld was a recently divorced mother of five children, unable to provide a place to live for her family. Eventually she moved into a friend’s basement but knew that wasn’t a solution.

““It was just a lot,” Bienefeld, now 35 recalls. “I had no idea what to do.”

Another friend referred her to Faith House, a Frederick shelter where women could stay with their children. “I was very nervous at first to come here,” she says, sitting in an office at Faith House. “I had to really humble myself.”

The Frederick Rescue Mission, which has been serving those is need in the local community for 60 years, opened Faith House eight years ago. It was not just as a shelter for women and their children—unavailable at that time—but as a way for them to develop skills for employment and resiliency. 

“We knew there was a need for a place for women to get back on their feet and get out on their own,” says Arnold Farlow, executive director of the Rescue Mission. 

Women come to Faith House with unique stories. Some are recently divorced and without job skills, or work but have living expenses that outweigh their earnings. Some are domestic violence victims or have recently gone through addiction recovery. But they all share one thing in common.

“They have all experienced some form of trauma,” says Ashley Garland, director of Faith House.

Inside the Faith House program are two different employment-focused housing steps: Thriving Futures, which provides the foundation for women and children living in the main house, where they can rest, assess needs and begin the path toward safe, suitable housing; and the Transitional Living Program, a one-year stay in the below-market-rate apartment building next to the main house, where the women expand on their employment and self-sufficiency goals.

“Our overarching goal is to bring healing and hope to women who are experiencing homelessness,” says Garland.

Success at Faith House can come in many forms. Women develop exit plans that can include finding their own place to live, perhaps with the assistance of organizations such as Advocates for Homeless Families or Interfaith Housing Alliance. Some might be able to return to previous living arrangements. And, as Garland, acknowledges, some women don’t find their success through Faith House, but she hopes they do elsewhere.

Bienefeld, among the success stories, admits the program wasn’t always easy, especially when she first came to Faith House, an environment that was totally new to her. She leaned on her faith. “The way I got through the program was God,” she says. She considers it a blessing that she found Faith House.

“It was really one of the best experiences I ever went through in my life,” says Bienefeld, who is now employed in Faith House as a house manager, working with women whose stories and struggles often feel familiar.

“It’s a blessing that I feel I can speak to them from a place of truth and experience,” she says.