San Jose Home Makers Plead for Space After Ministry Loses Dover Home

By D’Ann White

A group of volunteers accustomed to helping needy families is now in need of some help of its own.

The San Jose Home Makers, a ministry of St. Stephen Catholic Church in Valrico, is about to lose the place they've called home since forming three years ago.

The group has been operating out of a former convent donated by Catholic Charities, which runs the San Jose Mission on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Dover. However, the donated space is about to be bulldozed to make way for a new child-care center for migrant families.

This will leave the San Jose Home Makers with no place to store the donated furniture, household goods, sheets, blankets and other items they use to furnish apartments and homes for farmworker families and other needy residents.

Since its founding in 2008, the San Jose Home Makers have furnished homes for more than 400 needy families throughout southeast Hillsborough County.

Now the San Jose Home Makers are pleading with the community for a new donated space so it can continue serving needy families.

"We need a place large enough to hold all our things," said San Jose Home Makers co-founder Pam Stamey of Bloomingdale East. She said they need about 3,000 square feet of space. "It must have a bathroom, hopefully a nice one, air-conditioning and be in a good location, maybe on State Road 60 somewhere. That way it is in the middle between pickups and deliveries."

While Stamey emphasized she's happy the Redlands Christian Migrant Association is preparing to build a much-needed daycare center, without a new donated space, the future of the San Jose Home Makers is in jeopardy.

"As sad as it is for us, the Redland Christian Migrant Association will be building a wonderful child care center in its place. But it leaves the Homemakers without a place in less than four weeks," she said.

"If someone doesn't come through for us, we might have to close down, and that's just not acceptable," added Stamey. "We knew this would be coming, but it is still heartbreaking."

The ministry depends entirely on donations from the community to provide furnishings and household items to needy families that are establishing households, some for the first time after living a transient lifestyle.

Stamey said they have no operating budget and can't afford to pay rent.

The convent is currently overflowing with linens, beds, couches, tables and dishes that will have to be moved out, she said. 

"We're doing a lot of praying," said Stamey.

But, to stack their odds, she and her three dozen volunteers are using fliers and Facebook to get the word out about the need for space.

"I am hoping the Lord will touch someone who has an empty store front or warehouse," she said. "God is good and He has always provided for this ministry, so I feel confident that, if we get the word out, we will receive a donated space where we can continue our work."

To contact Pam Stamey, call (813) 300-7984. Visit the San Jose Home Makers on Facebook.