Empowering Single Mothers for a Brighter Future
At The Celena Foundation Inc., we believe that every mother deserves the chance to provide a safe and nurturing environment for her children. Located in Houston, TX, we focus on transforming HUD-owned properties into transitional homes, offering refuge for single mothers escaping unsafe situations or economic hardship. Our unique programs are designed to cultivate self-sufficiency and foster healthy family outcomes, empowering mothers through recovery support and effective parenting practices. Together, we are committed to building a brighter future for families in need.
The Mission
To provide transitional housing that empowers single mothers working toward stability, strengthens self-sufficiency, and nurtures healthy family outcomes.
Executive Summary
Single mothers in our community face disproportionate barriers to safe and stable housing. Many are navigating economic hardship, domestic instability, or sudden displacement while serving as the sole caregivers for their children. The lack of affordable, supportive
housing places these families at a heightened risk of homelessness, family separation, and long-term poverty.
Local emergency shelters are often overcrowded, have limited capacity for families, or are not equipped to provide the stability and supportive services single mothers need to transition toward self-sufficiency. As a result, many women are forced to remain in unsafe living situations, double up in unstable housing arrangements, or enter cycles of temporary shelter that do not address underlying challenges such as employment readiness, substance recovery, or parenting support.
According to national housing data, households led by single mothers experience homelessness at significantly higher rates than other family types, with children experiencing adverse outcomes, including disrupted education, increased stress, and long-term developmental risks. These statistical risks include being 5 times more likely to live in poverty and 2.5 times more likely to become teen parents. Approximately 70% of teen suicides, high school dropouts, and gang members come from within a single-mother family dynamic. Without access to safe, stable housing paired with supportive services, these families struggle to break cycles of instability.
The proposed shelter and transitional housing program directly addresses this gap by providing secure, dignified housing alongside structured programs focused on self-sufficiency, recovery support, and parenting education. By stabilizing housing first, the program creates a foundation for long-term family stability, improved child well-being, and stronger community outcomes.
Organizational Background
The Celena Foundation was established in response to a deeply personal and profound human experience. Founded by Kayla Esquivel, who lost her mother to substance abuse, the organization was born from both grief and insight into systematic failures that leave vulnerable mothers without the support they need to survive, recover, and parent safely. During her childhood, her mother lacked access to stable housing, integrated recovery, and family- centered support systems, resources, and research now show are critical to the long-term recovery and family preservation.
As a child, the founder and her brothers and sisters were placed in and out of the foster care system due to their mother's untreated substance abuse disorder and housing instability. This instability not only disrupted their childhoods but also contributed to long-term trauma and disconnection. Today, some of her siblings continue to struggle with addiction, underscoring how unaddressed substance use, family separation, and lack of early intervention can perpetuate generational cycles of hardship.
During Celena's time of greatest need, services were fragmented and limited, often forcing mothers to choose between sobriety, housing, and maintaining custody of their children. The founder believes that if comprehensive, family- centered programs-offering safe housing, substance recovery, parenting support, and accountability- had been available, her mother's chances of long-term recovery and survival would have been significantly greater.
The Celena Foundation was created to ensure that other families do not face the same circumstances. The organization is committed to providing holistic, trauma-informed services that stabilize families, preserve parent-child relationships, and empower single mothers to rebuild their lives with dignity and self-sufficiency. By addressing housing, recovery, and family support together rather than in isolation, the Foundation seeks to interrupt cycles of addiction, foster care involvement, and generational trauma- creating pathways to lasting change for both mothers and their children.
