About Us

Abby Kelley Foster House, Inc. (Abby’s House) opened in 1976 as one of the first overnight emergency shelters for women -- with or without children -- in the U.S.

Abby’s House was formed at the beginning of the battered women’s movement – there were no paradigms to follow in organizational development. Instead, the volunteers who ran the shelter listened carefully to the needs of the women and responded accordingly. The spirit of empowerment, sisterhood and mutuality embodied by the original volunteer activists continues to inform our program delivery today.
 
Abby’s House is committed to ending homelessness. In this spirit, we have not expanded shelter services, but rather, have expanded the number of service-enriched, affordable housing units. We have converted two abandoned houses into beautiful homes and more than doubled the number of units we operated when we took on the building at 52 High Street -- all without increasing the number of staff! Abby’s House now manages 78 units of housing in three buildings near downtown Worcester, MA.