History

Shelterhouse was formed in 1976 by a group of concerned citizens who facilitated temporary shelter for victims in volunteers’ homes. Over the next four decades, we've helped tens of thousands of people in Midland and Gladwin Counties find new lives free of domestic violence and sexual assault.

In 1980, we opened our first client services center, offering shelter, crisis counseling, advocacy, court accompaniment, education, therapy, and support groups. We moved to a larger location in 1998, and in 2013, we opened the Shelterhouse Resale Shop, a resale boutique that offers gently used clothing, accessories and home goods, with all proceeds going to support Shelterhouse operations.

In 2015, Shelterhouse was awarded one of only three Blueprint for Safety grants by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Violence Against Women – this grant helped transform Midland’s system of handling domestic violence. That same year, Shelterhouse was also selected by the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence and the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition to pilot new best practices and strategies for providing services for people with disabilities.

In 2020 we opened our new, state-of-the-art facility that enables us to shelter three times as many clients than our previous location and, in 2022, contains an in-house SANE (sexual assault nursing examination) suite. In early 2024 Shelterhouse expanded its SANE services even further and opened an in-house medical examination room in Gladwin County.

Each year, we answer over 5,000 crisis calls, provide over 7,000 nights of shelter for those afraid to stay in their own homes, and impact thousands of additional people through community education and outreach.