Lazarus House Initiative, Inc.

Breaking through systemic barriers by promoting affordable housing, economic/educational/vocational empowerment, and leadership!

LHI is a 501(c) (3) community, faith-based charitable, social services/human needs organization that Cathy Evans formed in 2001 in response to the needs of marginalized individuals, especially chronically homeless women in Harris/Fort Bend County, TX. By the grace and will of God and after a four year hiatus, Dr. Cathy Williams, a doctor of philosophy, specializing generally in psychology and specifically in educational psychology, with a Post Doctorate in social psychology, reinstated the organization in Dallas County, TX in 2016. To combat inherent systemic barriers to fair housing, quality education, and quality of life for all people, through our person-centered and holistic case management, housing, employment/vocational, and youth/seniors services and programs, we equip and galvanize individuals towards social inclusion and upward social mobility. We aim to break links to generational despondency, learned helplessness, and poverty and social inclusion and upward social mobility by facilitating self-directedness, self-efficacy, and self-sufficiency.

We tailored our three outreaches from evidence-based transformative and spiritually sound person-centered approaches to provoke change in the lives of those we serve. Through our housing outreach (HELP), we meet the basic housing needs of extremely-low, including homeless individuals, to moderately-low income households via our self-sufficiency program that keeps housing accessible and affordable while people pursue vocational training or stable full- or part-time employment. Through our employment/vocational outreach (EVES), we make economic power, including SSI, SSDI, and full- or part-time employment, a reality for people with and without disabilities who have a desire to work, but have particular challenges to landing a decent paying job, such as a criminal history, disability, or spotty work history by assisting with applying for SSI or SSDI and job readiness training. Through our youth/seniors outreach (YELP), we make social power for youth with and without disabilities and seniors aged 55 plus through our intergenerational youth employment/vocational services and senior activities and workshops, focusing on creativity/giftedness, healthy aging, leisure, literacy, job quest training, P-SAT/SAT preparation, spirituality in daily living, and volunteerism, to name a few.