The Need to Provide Clean Clothes for Our Community Members In Need Has Never Been More Urgent
A recent survey suggests that 63 percent of Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness. Every day, you share a sidewalk, elevator or bus with hundreds of people who could be $200 away from an eviction notice.
When you’re homeless, it doesn’t take long to look that way, and the world and your options in it shrink. People judge you based on your appearance, and what you wear has a huge impact on how you see yourself and how others treat you, Karen J. Pine writes in her book Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of fashion.
Your clothes can reflect and affect your mood, health and overall confidence. There is even a term for that phenomenon: “enclothed cognition,” a fusion of “the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them,” according to Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky, the researchers who coined the phrase in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
For those experiencing homelessness, the repercussions of enclothed cognition can be life changing. The increased self-esteem that flows from wearing clean and comfortable high-quality clothes can help to open the doors to employment and housing opportunities.
We all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. We try to do our part by providing clothing in a safe, humane and dignified way.
Philadelphia has a 23 percent poverty rate, one of the highest in the nation. Of that 26 percent, over half (11.1 percent) are living in deep poverty, with incomes below 50 percent of the federal poverty limit.
The city’s average unemployment rate was 12.2 percent in 2020, 4 percent higher than the national average of 8 percent.
Approximately 8,206 unduplicated people (including families) accessed emergency shelter in Philadelphia last year. In addition, numerous individuals were turned away from shelter due to limited capacity.
During the 2019 - 2020 school year, 3,800 children and youth in Philadelphia experienced homelessness.
COVID-19 caused sudden and severe damage to Philadelphia’s economy in 2020 that city is still recovering from.