The Nuns Were One Foreclosure Away From the Street
A $10,000 loan from Montreal saves Seattle's House of the Good Shepherd, where 54 children and 32 penitent women live and barely five of them pay a cent.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The social troubles that threatened to swamp the House of the Good Shepherd have been overcome by the efforts of the Mother Superior and her associates, and the foreclosure proceedings were averted by a new five-year loan of $10,000 made to the sisters from Montreal. Thousands of dollars of this loan were at once used to release the property of the McDougall mortgage, leaving a balance of nearly $5,000 still due, which is secured by a second mortgage for one year.
The $10,000 loan will be paid within the year, in time to wipe out the McDougall mortgage and leave a fair margin for pressing needs.
There are today fifty-four children in the home, only three paying. Of the penitents in the house there are thirty-two today, of which only two pay a small amount. It has been only by great care on the part of the sisters that food for the inmates has been secured.
The present home at Jefferson street has for some time been too small to accommodate the increasing number of children and penitents, and the present financial relief has enabled the Mother Superior to start the building of an addition on the north side, which will give twelve additional rooms. The addition will be 37x25 and two and a half stories high. The cost of this, if paid for, would be about $1,500, but as material and labor are mostly donated, the actual cost to the sisters will not exceed $500.
“There are today fifty-four children in the home, only three paying. Of the penitents in the house there are thirty-two today, of which only two pay a small amount.”
A charitable home for destitute children and women in crisis, kept open by donated labor and a rescue loan, was running on the same arithmetic Seattle shelters run on now: almost nobody can pay, and one foreclosure notice can put dozens of beds on the street. The sisters' books are a reminder that care work has never been self-funding — it has always been underwritten by somebody's charity.
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