Samuel's House

Samuel’s House is a Key West nonprofit that has housed people in crisis across Monroe County since 1999. It serves women on their own, mothers with children, fathers with children, and intact families facing homelessness, domestic instability or crisis, and it is a registered 501(c)(3).

It started with a jail ministry. Elmira Leto began visiting women held at the Monroe County Detention Center in 1992 and kept meeting the same people, because they had nowhere to go when they were released. She converted her family’s interior design shop into a 21-bed shelter, which opened in 1999. Leto still leads the organization, and in 2016 she was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame for the work. She was also a founding member of the Southernmost Homeless Assistance League and of the Monroe County Continuum of Care, and has served on its board since 1999.

The organization now runs several facilities rather than one. The Mary Spottswood Women’s Center provides emergency shelter. Kathy’s Hope and Casa de Meredith provide permanent supportive housing, and a further transitional housing program was recently added. Around the housing sit case management and recovery support, family reunification services and life skills coaching, which is the part that determines whether someone leaves with somewhere to go next.

The need is local and structural. Key West’s housing costs mean that people with jobs get displaced, and the organization’s deputy director has described residents who end up sleeping in their cars after a rent increase. Samuel’s House takes people across that whole range, from those living outdoors to professionals who lost a lease.

The administrative office is at 1614 Truesdell Court in Key West, open weekdays, and the phone line is the way in. The locations of the shelters themselves are not published.