Give Detroit – A Charitable Registry
// MISSION
COTS exists to alleviate homelessness by providing services that enable people to achieve self-sufficiency and obtain quality, affordable housing. COTS also exists to advocate for long-term solutions to the problem of homelessness.
// KEY SERVICES PROVIDED
COTS is committed to serving the most vulnerable Detroiters by providing emergency shelter, affordable housing, and more. It creates opportunities for families overcoming poverty to collaborate, thrive, and succeed in building strong and stable households, neighborhoods, and communities.
The Homeless Action Network of Detroit’s State of Homelessness report indicates that 1,077 adults in families and 1,577 children in families experienced homelessness in 2020. COTS’ Peggy’s Place emergency shelter for families supported 171 adults and 319 children in 2020; the same year, COTS provided affordable housing and supportive housing to 177 adults and 238 children.
Programs offered by the organization include a family-only emergency shelter; an emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence; long-term supportive housing with assistance for addiction, disability, or illness; and child development services for homeless families with infants and toddlers.
COTS has served multiple generations of families within its shelter and housing programs. Shelter and housing were the agency’s strengths, but these supports alone could not end homelessness for families. Leadership began to notice that adults who were once children served by COTS, alongside their parents, were returning a generation later with their own children.
With the realization of poverty as the driver of homelessness and the need to address it came COTS’ theory of change for disrupting generational poverty. After making the necessary organizational changes to put theory to practice, the organization’s focus is now exclusively on encouraging families to develop economic self-sufficiency and stabilized environments, creating a multigenerational impact and ultimately breaking the cycle of poverty.
This innovative approach is called Passport to Self-Sufficiency™. Passport to Self-Sufficiency, COTS’s poverty-reduction framework, is used across all programs in the organization. Using a two-generation, whole-family approach, it partners with families who are currently or are at risk of experiencing homelessness, to provide long-term services that are person-centered, strengths-based, and trauma-informed.
// LEADERSHIP
TOP EXECUTIVES
Cheryl P. Johnson
Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Gilroy
Chief Financial Officer
Aisha Morrell-Ferguson
Chief Development Officer
Delphia Simmons
Chief Impact & Learning Officer
Linda M. Koos
Board President
// CONTACT INFORMATION
COTS
26 Peterboro, Suite 100 Detroit, MI 48201
313-576-0206
www.cotsdetroit.org
