MCREST to open new shelter with donated Gardner White furniture
April 1, 2022

The day is finally arriving—on April 8, 2022, after years of effort, MCREST will cut the ribbon on our new women and children’s shelter in a ceremony attended by member churches, public officials, and the community.

MCREST raised more than $1.6 million through a two-year capital campaign to better accommodate and enhance the support provided to children experiencing homelessness and their families. More than 1,000 children experience homelessness in Macomb County every year.  

MCREST is opening the new shelter with donated Gardner White furniture. On Jan. 11, Gardner White delivered and donated furniture to complete the public spaces of MCREST’s newly renovated shelter, located in a formerly vacant building at 215 South Main Street in Mount Clemens. BEDGEAR donated 100 twin size pillows.

April Fidler, MCREST’s executive director, teared up as Gardner White employees carried in an overstuffed tan couch and set it down in a sunlit room inset with gleaming white bookcases, walls painted a deep ocean blue.
“It’s finally happening,” she said.

As the furniture was moved into the gleaming room with its fireplace and blue walls, Fidler took it all in, the new furniture and especially the surrounding building—the culmination of years of hard work.  

 “This will change the lives of our kids,” she said.

The new shelter, which will open to guests on April 10, represents a fundamental shift in the way MCREST delivers services to women and children and our not-for-profit’s efforts to reduce the traumatic impact of homelessness on children.

For more than thirty years, MCREST sheltered Macomb County women and children experiencing homelessness in a network of 70+ partner churches, each partner congregation generously hosting meals and shelter for a week.

Already destabilized by homelessness, children and their parents moved around the county weekly, as host congregations changed. Sometimes, children spent hours on the bus, shuttled between host churches far north in the county and Roseville Community Schools, unable to do their homework until late at night.

 
“It’s traumatic to move children around, particularly during the school year,” said Fidler. “The new shelter will reduce the stress on the whole family as we wrap our arms around them with support services and stability.”

But now, with the opening of MCREST’s new building, Macomb County families and children experiencing homelessness will gain a stable location to receive support services on their path to self-reliance. Men experiencing homelessness will continue to be welcomed within the church network.

Our church partners will team with MCREST to provide meals to women and children in the kitchen facilities of the new shelter. For more information on how your church can serve, or to become a partner church, contact MCREST Volunteer Membership Liaison Christina Naden at christinan@mcrest.org