MADISON WI- A new care facility in Wisconsin’s capital city aims to help homeless residents facing a terminal illness live out their last days with a roof over their heads.
Solace Home, which opened this week in Madison, is a four-bed residential facility open to adults who have less than six months to live and have no place to live.
“If someone is looking for a place to receive end-of-life care and they may not have a house, they may not have family, they may have been living on the street or doubled up with someone who can’t care for them, our community is now able to offer a home for people to be,” Executive Director Kendra Deja tells WTMJ’s Spanning The State.
Deja says efforts began to set up the facility in 2015 by a group called Solace Friends. In addition to donations, Dane County contributed $200,000 to put towards the project. Deja says they welcomed their first resident last week.
“Before something like Solace Home existed, someone’s options would be to stay in the hospital and die there or to go to a facility that people may or may not have funding for,” Deja adds. “People may have gone to hotels or in-patient hospice facilities, and while those facilities do help, what was missing was a home and a home-like setting that offers someone a place to be.”
Residents eligible for Solace House, a person must be terminally ill and enrolled with a hospice agency, and must be facing homelessness or housing insecurity.
You can read more about Solace House here, and listen to Spanning The State’s entire interview in the player above.
