About Viola’s House
Viola’s House is a maternity home that exists to provide maternity housing and support services to teen mothers who chose life for their unborn child. Homeless teen mothers can live in their facility for up to a year. Viola’s House has a staff/resident ratio of 1:1, with hands-on staff, providing residents with guidance, parenting, cooking, and life skills.
Viola’s House staff provides individual counseling services, group counseling, job placement, support with completion of High School diploma, rapid childcare access, parenting classes and material assistance for all of the child’s needs. These services are currently given to the teen mothers in DISD twice a month onsite at Lincoln High School and Skyline High School.
How Viola’s House began
Thana Simmons was led to found Viola’s House through her own experiences. Viola’s House was a vision in Simmon’s heart since she was a young mother. She experienced pregnancy at the age of 17. With a village of support, she raised her children while finishing her degree and gaining a career. She wanted to provide that same village of support to teen mothers in the South Dallas community. She progressively learned that housing was a major need for this demographic, so she opened a residential program as well to provide housing services to teen mothers who are at risk for homelessness.
Thana then began mentoring teen mothers in Irving ISD and Plano ISD, then mentored teen mothers in schools for years, while volunteering at Interfaith Housing Coalition.
In 2015, Viola’s House opened with two-bedroom apartment and they quickly grew to three apartments. Since then, they have grown into a renovated facility and plan to start renovating an overflow facility that was given to them in 2022 for mothers who have older babies.
Impact of Viola’s House
Viola’s House biggest accomplishment is the over 250 homeless teen mothers who have received housing, hope and love.
How you can help Viola’s House
- An immediate, and constant, need for Viola’s House is diapers – they distribute over 20,000 diapers a month, and hope to increase this distribution effort.
- Gently used baby clothing
- Volunteers for their High School days.
- Viola House is in the process of opening a Baby Benefit Store, with gently used baby clothing and baby accessories. While items will be offered at low prices, $20 vouchers will be provided to mothers who come into the store and complete a parenting class onsite.
Viola’s House believe that love rests, rules and abides in their home. Their goal is for each individual mother to have a village of support, while completing her personal individual goals and for each mother to thrive in motherhood and in the community.
