The gap only donors can fill
No government program, insurance policy, or emergency fund is built to pay for a full year of faith-based, residential recovery for a woman and the children she brings with her. That gap is real, it is structural, and it is the reason this work depends on people who choose to give.
This page is about why that money doesn't reach a program built like this one. For what a restored year is worth — in cost, and in human terms — see the return on a restored life.
Millions of women need this kind of help. Almost none of the money meant to help them was built to reach a program shaped like this one.
85.4%
of Americans with a substance use disorder received no treatment at all in 2023, per the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (SAMHSA). In Texas, an estimated 75.8% of those needing treatment went without it, per SAMHSA's 2022–2023 Texas estimates.
35 per 100
affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income households nationally — just 26 per 100 in Texas — per the National Low Income Housing Coalition's The Gap, 2024 (Texas data).
50%
of Texas domestic-violence survivors who sought shelter in 2024 were turned away for lack of capacity, per the Texas Council on Family Violence's Honoring Texas Victims report. Nationally, domestic-violence programs reported 13,018 requests for help going unmet in a single day — 58% of them for housing — per NNEDV's Domestic Violence Counts, 2026.
Women leaving incarceration face a version of the same math. As one illustrative example, not a national survey like the figures above, one Houston reentry program built specifically for women receives more than 300 applications a year for the 12 to 14 spaces it has, per the Prison Policy Initiative, 2019. It is a single program's numbers, not a national estimate — but the shape is the same one the treatment, housing, and shelter statistics above show at scale.
The money that exists was built for something shorter than this.
Government and emergency funding streams are real, and they matter — but they are structured around short stays, acute crises, and secular service delivery. A domestic-violence shelter grant is typically sized for weeks, not a year. Emergency shelter funding is built to get someone off the street tonight, not to walk beside her through twelve months of recovery. Treatment funding, where it exists, is often tied to a clinical diagnosis and a defined course of care — not to the surrounding work of housing, parenting support, and rebuilding a life around it.
A residential, women-and-children program that is also faith-based sits between the categories most public and emergency dollars are sized to fund. That is not a claim about any administration or policy position — it is a structural description of how funding streams are scoped. The practical result is a gap of exactly the kind the figures above describe: real need, real funding somewhere in the system, and very little overlap between the two for a program built like this one.
Donors carry the first four months. She carries herself from there.
Mercy Manor's program costs roughly $500 a month to provide for one woman — her room, food, counseling, case management, and the surrounding support that makes a year possible. The first four months of every woman's stay are covered entirely by scholarships, grants, and donations — because in those early months, the work in front of her is getting well, not earning a paycheck.
From month five, once she is working again, she begins contributing $500 a month toward her own program cost. That shift is deliberate: it protects her dignity by making her a contributor rather than only a recipient, and it means the dollars donors give in those first four months keep working for the next woman — they are never asked to carry an entire year alone.
No government contract fills that first four months. No insurance policy covers it. It exists because people who will never meet her decide her getting well is worth their money.
A gift here does not supplement a government program. It replaces the one that doesn't exist.
Five hundred dollars a month, for four months — two thousand dollars — is the entire bridge one woman needs between walking in the door and standing on her own well enough to start contributing herself. A full year of care runs about $6,000 per woman; that $2,000 bridge is the exact piece no government program, insurance policy, or emergency fund is built to cover. That is the size of the gap this page describes, and it is the size a gift closes.
The same gap runs through the need on this site more broadly: in addiction treatment, in housing, in shelter for survivors of abuse, and in reentry after incarceration. A woman in front of Mercy Manor may be carrying more than one of these at once — and public funding was not built to close any of them the whole way. See what closing that gap actually returns, what the evidence says works once she's inside the program, and where one home like this fits against a need this size.
This bridge is overseen by Mercy Manor's founder and board, who can speak to exactly how gift dollars are used.
Close the Four-Month GapEvery figure on this page, and where it came from
- SAMHSA, 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Annual National Report (2023)
- SAMHSA, 2022–2023 NSDUH State-Level Small Area Estimates: Texas (2022–2023 average)
- National Low Income Housing Coalition, The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes (2024), and Texas state data
- Texas Council on Family Violence, Honoring Texas Victims, 2024
- NNEDV, Domestic Violence Counts: 20th Annual Report (2026)
- Prison Policy Initiative, Women's mass incarceration and the reentry housing shortage (2019)
Last reviewed: July 2026. Every figure is dated and linked to its source; program figures (cost per woman, scholarship structure, and resident contribution) reflect Mercy Manor's confirmed admissions and funding policy.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't the government just pay for this?
Government and emergency funding is real, but it's sized for short stays, acute crises, and secular service delivery — weeks of emergency shelter, a defined course of clinical treatment, not a year of residential, faith-based care for a woman and her children. A program shaped like Mercy Manor falls structurally between the categories most public grants are built to fund, which is why donor giving carries the months government funding doesn't reach.
How is Mercy Manor funded if not by government grants?
Mercy Manor is funded by scholarships, grants, and individual donations. It costs roughly $500 a month to provide for one woman. Donors cover that cost entirely for her first four months; from month five, once she's working again, she begins contributing $500 a month herself.
Does a woman ever pay for her own program?
Yes, starting in month five. Once she is working again, she contributes $500 a month toward her own cost of care — a deliberate design that makes her a contributor to her own recovery rather than only a recipient of it. Her first four months remain fully covered by donors.
What does a gift to Mercy Manor actually cover?
A gift covers the bridge government funding doesn't: the first four months of a woman's stay, before she is working and able to contribute. $500 a month — $2,000 over four months — is the full cost of carrying one woman through the part of the year she cannot yet carry herself.