HOMELESSNESS INITIATIVES

Bridging people from homelessness to training, employment, housing, connection, and spiritual community

The Portico Cafe

The Portico Cafe is a social enterprise that offers people transitioning from homelessness, addiction, and incarceration with job training, employment ladders, and connections to safe, affordable housing.

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Portico Housing Solutions

The Portico Housing Solutions (PHS) helps men transition from homelessness to stability. PHS provides affordable housing, a program coach, and spiritual community through The Portico's Sunday Gathering. PHS is a separate 501c3 and has two houses with a total of six beds.

Love INC

Love INC Love INC is housed on the third floor of the Portico, and is a network of churches, volunteers, and community organizations that work together to coordinate and provide help to struggling neighbors with basic needs – food, clothing, and longer-term responses, such as life skills, training and transitional housing programs.

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Homeless Memorial

The Portico has a wall onsite that lists the names of the people who have died on the streets of Tampa in the previous calendar year. Homeless people are often invisible to the community; and most don’t have a memorial service. Every January we hold a memorial service to ensure that every person who dies without a place to lay their head, will be remembered.

Homeless Jesus

The Homeless Jesus Sculpture is a visual reminder of the “least of these” in our society and that people often find the Divine in places that they least expect it. The Canadian sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz only allows one sculpture per city. Prominently placed at the south entrance of The Portico, it is a humble silhouette seeking obscured respite. The thought-provoking piece depicts an unidentified person, covered with a blanket, sleeping on a park bench. Those passing by don’t realize it is depicting Jesus until they take a closer look at the holes in his feet.

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