Philly Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson gave $250,000 to develop city’s first haven for unhoused pregnant women

When City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson became pregnant with her second child in 2016, she didn’t anticipate problems. After all, her older daughter had been born without complications two years earlier.

However, on the delivery table, despite an epidural, she felt excruciating pain. She would later learn she ruptured her uterus, a rare but serious complication that she said made her another statistic in the nation’s ongoing Black maternal health crisis in which Black women are twice as likely to face life-threatening pregnancy-related complications and three or four times more likely than white and Hispanic women to die from them.

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When housing insecurity is added to that mix, the likelihood of maternal health risks escalate.

This is why on Feb. 28, at a morning City Hall news conference, Gilmore Richardson announced a $250,000 grant from the city to Cleopatra Robinson, founder and executive director of the nonprofit A Home From Shana Foundation, to create LaborLiveLove — a transitional housing facility for expectant people who do not have stable housing to help reduce Black maternal health disparities.

“What we found is the housing instability experience translates into food insecurity, unemployment, transportation issues — and the results of all that is not getting the type of care you need to receive,” said Gilmore Richardson, adding that LaborLiveLove would provide “emergency housing and transition support to help during the precarious time of pregnancy.”

Robinson said the facility, which she plans to open in the summer, will be located in Wynnefield and will serve up to six people at a time, providing prenatal, postpartum care and help finding affordable housing for the clients and their infants.

For Erica Elrod, being pregnant and insecurely housed was a devastating time in her life.

For a while everything was going well. Her job was good — she worked in a busy dental office. She had her own apartment, she had a car and was in a romantic relationship. And then she became pregnant.

According to the Urban Institute, just becoming pregnant is a risk factor for becoming unhoused, and that increases the likelihood of having birth-related complications.

At around five months pregnant, Elrod’s relationship with her boyfriend fell apart, her landlord needed the Bridesburg apartment for her own use and refused to renew Elrod’s $900 a month lease. All Elrod could find was a monthly lease for $1,200 to rent a room with a shared bathroom in South Philadelphia. And when she had to leave her job earlier than she expected because of pregnancy-related health complications, her unemployment was denied.

Her travails continued.

Her new landlord decided to sell the building and said she would have to leave. “They let me stay a month in an Airbnb they had in Germantown” but afterwards, out of options, she returned to her ex-boyfriend’s home.

“I had to go stay with my daughter’s father and that was a toxic environment. He wound up kicking me out,” Elrod said. By her third trimester, she had lost her job, housing, savings, transportation and furnishings, all while trying to deliver a healthy baby.

“A lot of my belongings went into storage and I fell behind (with the storage fees). My savings were depleted. My belongings got auctioned off. I’m not material girl, but I lost a lot.”Elrod said. “I couldn’t keep my cell phone on. I hit rock bottom.”

After giving birth, Elrod was again unhoused and started looking for a city shelter that had room for her and a newborn. Unsuccessful and out of options, she left Philadelphia last February to live with her brother in Arizona.

Robinson, a certified doula who provides nonmedical birth support and a former intake worker at a city youth shelter, has heard too many stories like Elrod’s and is looking to help “mothers who are couch surfing or in a community shelter or facing eviction.”

“The LaborLiveLove program will be an emergency maternity safe haven staffed with certified doulas,” Robinson said. “Right now, nothing exists prioritizing a very vulnerable population.”

A Home From Shana Foundation was named for LaShana Gilmore, once Cleopatra Robinson’s best friend. When Gilmore went into labor in July 2019 with her second child, Robinson never thought she wouldn’t return home. But despite a good job, good health, stable housing, a loving family and good health insurance, Gilmore became another Black woman who died from a preventable delivery death.

It changed Robinson’s career path — she became a certified doula in the hope of preventing needless tragedy.

A Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council report released in August found between 2016 and 2022 there had been a 40% rise in the rate of poor maternal health outcomes and the increase was largest for Black women.

“Pennsylvania absolutely mirrors what is happening across the country,” said State Rep. Morgan Cephas, cochair of the newly-formed PA Black Maternal Health Caucus. “We need to write our own story as it relates to the maternal care morbidity and motility space,” Cephas said.

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In Arizona, Elrod received support services that enabled her to get back on her feet.

She now has a good job, a comfortable, affordable apartment, childcare for her daughter and a working car. Elrod thinks Pennsylvania should do more to help.

“People are experiencing a lot of hardships,” she said.