Miracle Messages

10/07/2026

It's time to Save the Date for the 8th Annual Good Neighbor Gala! It will be held on Saturday, February 6, 2027. Please mark your calendars because you will not want to miss this incredibly special evening with neighbors and friends. Ticket link and more information coming soon!

10/02/2026

Huge thanks to Charlotte Flukey and Madelynn Laventure, UC Santa Cruz humanities students who spent four weeks with Miracle Messages of Santa Cruz County through the HumLaunch mentorship program! 💛

They completed program referrals and got a firsthand look at what people-focused outreach looks like. Their care and curiosity made a real difference for the people we serve.

Thank you also to Marlena De Castro (UCSC '22), our Santa Cruz County Community Outreach and Engagement Specialist who mentored them, and to the UCSC Humanities Division for building programs that connect students with community work.

Read more about HumLaunch and the other summer programs here: https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/09/humanities-students-get-real-world-experience-through-summer-programs/

10/01/2026

This week is Good Neighbor Week, and we’re taking a moment to celebrate and recognize the incredible volunteers who make the work of Miracle Messages possible.

Every week, our volunteers show up with compassion, generosity, and a commitment to building meaningful connections within their communities. Whether they’re serving as Miracle Friends, supporting local outreach, or helping spread the word about our mission, their time and dedication help create a stronger sense of connection and belonging for people experiencing homelessness and isolation.

We are so grateful for each and every volunteer who chooses to be a good neighbor - not just this week, but throughout the year. Thank you for showing up, listening, caring, and reminding others that they are not alone!

09/25/2026

For more than 30 years, one family searched for her.

They hired private investigators. Followed every lead. Eventually, they began planning something no family ever wants to: a memorial service for someone whose fate they never truly knew.

What they didn't know was that outreach workers in San Francisco were supporting a woman who had been living on the same street corner for decades, largely unseen by the world around her. She was facing serious health challenges, but one thing remained clear. She wanted to go home. She wanted to hear her mother's voice again.

When her care team reached out to Miracle Messages, our Digital Detective Roger began searching. It took weeks of careful, determined work to find the sister who had spent decades trying to find her.

This is the work of ending relational poverty. This is why every search matters. 💛

09/18/2026

The video from our recent Commonwealth Club panel is now up, and we couldn't be prouder of the conversation.

"Rethinking Homelessness Response: The Case for Belonging and Connection" brought together Lawrence Lincoln, Khadijah Williams, and Christina Garcia, with Kevin F. Adler moderating. Thank you to Commonwealth Club World Affairs for hosting, and to each panelist for sharing your insight and experience so generously.

If you care about how we respond to homelessness, this one is absolutely worth your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfPhai7pTm0

We'll be sharing more highlights from the discussion soon.

09/15/2026

New research adds to a growing body of evidence: social connection isn't just good for wellbeing — it may be one of the strongest predictors of long-term cognitive health. A 25-year Northwestern University study on "super-agers" ( also reported by CNN and the New York Times) found that strong relationships, not diet or exercise, were the trait these individuals shared most. Isolation, on the other hand, is linked to real physical effects on the brain; it's not just an emotional experience, it's a public health issue.

This is exactly why Miracle Messages exists. Relationships aren't a nice-to-have, they're essential to how we live, heal, and age well. We help people rebuild the web of relationships around them, because everyone is someone's somebody, at every stage of life.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/08/what-makes-a-superager

09/08/2026

Tickets for this event are going quick! Please join an important conversation held this Thursday at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco as we tackle a dimension of homelessness that rarely gets its due: the role of relationships, connection, and belonging alongside housing and material support.

Miracle Messages founder, Kevin F. Adler, will moderate this conversation with three remarkable leaders who are shaping this work through lived experience, policy, and systems change:

Lawrence Lincoln, a writer and advocate who transformed his own experience with homelessness and PTSD into post-traumatic growth.

Khadijah Williams, Senior National Director of Policy and Advocacy at LIFT, where she built the organization’s national advocacy function from the ground up.

Christina Garcia, President of Colorado’s Community Economic Defense Project. Her own experience with homelessness and recovery grounds her work in a deep commitment to dignity and belonging.

This isn't a conversation you'll hear in most homelessness policy circles, and that's exactly why it matters. Whether you're a service provider, funder, advocate, or simply someone who cares about getting this right, this roundtable offers a rare chance to think differently about a problem we've all been trying to solve for a long time.

https://ow.ly/B52P50ZKXvF

08/24/2026

We've spent decades and billions of dollars trying to solve homelessness and it persists. So what's missing?

At this Commonwealth Club roundtable on September 10th, Miracle Messages founder Kevin F. Adler will moderate a conversation with people who've lived it, served it, and studied it: Lawrence Lincoln, Khadijah Williams, and Christina Garcia.

Their focus isn't just housing, it's the relationships and belonging that make housing stick. They'll dig into what it actually looks like to treat human connection as an essential part of the solution, not an afterthought, and how that shifts the whole conversation from "Housing First" to "Housing AND Belonging."

If you care about getting homelessness response right (not just funded) this is a conversation worth being in the room for.

🎟️ Get your tickets (in-person and live-streamed): https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2026-09-10/rethinking-homelessness-response-case-belonging-and-connection

Miracle Messages is an award-winning nonprofit organization that helps people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems. Join us.

07/10/2026

Our team is in Washington D.C. this week for the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference, and we're already leaving the opening sessions with a lot on our minds and in our hearts.

Keynote speaker Julián Castro, CEO of Latino Community Foundation; former U.S. Secretary of HUD; and former Mayor of San Antonio, set a powerful tone for the week.

While there is genuine reason to celebrate an overall reduction in homelessness from last year to this year, the data tells a more complicated story when you look closely. Adults 65 and older actually saw a nearly 7% increase in homelessness, a sobering reminder that progress isn't always evenly distributed.

Perhaps even more striking: 94% of Area Agencies on Aging identify lack of affordable housing for older adults as their single biggest challenge.

At Miracle Messages, we know that older adults experiencing homelessness face unique barriers, including profound isolation and disconnection. We'll be sharing more reflections from the conference this month's newsletter. Stay tuned. 💜

06/24/2026

We have some exciting news to share! Miracle Messages now has 10 active chapters across the United States, with more on the way! 🎉

When we released our Impact Report back in March, (https://bit.ly/MMImpactReport2025) we had eight chapters. We've already added two more since then, bringing our community of dedicated volunteers to cities across the country: from Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth, TX to Burlington, VT, Eugene, OR, Minneapolis, MN, Santa Cruz, CA, Richmond, CA, Santa Fe, NM, and Boulder, CO.

Each chapter represents volunteers who believe that no one should experience homelessness alone and who are doing something about it in their own communities. We are so proud of this growing family and grateful for every single person making this work possible.
Stay tuned, there's so much more to come. 💜