Annual Catholic Appeal supports agencies like The Care Service connecting people with affordable housing
Sherry Rowland delights in starting her day outside on her second-story balcony, feeling a cool morning breeze as she relaxes in her chair.
And when the heat index in late August crept over 100 degrees, she was just as glad to spend the midday hours inside in the air conditioning.
With the help of The Care Service at Sts. Joachim and Ann, Sherry moved into her condo in mid-August after many months of living out of her car.
On the first day there, “I cried,” she said. “We came in the parking lot and I started crying and I said, ‘we’re home.’”
Sherry is one of thousands of people throughout the Archdiocese of St. Louis helped by agencies that receive grants from the Annual Catholic Appeal.
The 2026 Annual Catholic Appeal raised $19 million from close to 30,000 households, the archdiocese announced in mid-September. With corporate matching gifts and estate gifts, the total is $19.4 million.
This year’s appeal marks the highest total contributions raised since its inception. The increase over the 2025 appeal — when $17.4 million was raised in pledges and endowment earnings — is also the highest year-over-year increase in the appeal’s history.
The ACA’s Affordable Housing Fund will receive $500,000 of the overage money, or money raised beyond the appeal’s goal. The fund was created in 2024 after the archdiocese’s All Things New social outreach subcommittee identified in a report that affordable housing is among the most pressing unmet needs for struggling families.
Overage funds will also go toward support for parishes, Catholic schools, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, food pantries, the Religious Assistance Fund, the Archbishop’s Charity Fund and more.
The Care Service is a longtime recipient of Annual Catholic Appeal funding and received Affordable Housing Fund grants in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Those grants have helped the organization purchase and operate more affordable and transitional housing units for clients, bringing the current total to 18 units.
The tri-county area of St. Charles, Lincoln and Warren counties has about seven affordable housing units for every 100 renters in need, The Care Service executive director Pam Struckhoff said. New apartment complexes going up are largely geared toward higher income renters, too.
“There’s a huge need, and you can’t just pull yourselves up by your bootstraps for that,” Pam said.
In The Care Service’s units, clients typically pay rent equal to about 30% of their income, Pam said, and the organization also works with people who qualify for housing vouchers.
“We see them coming off the streets, or coming out of an unsafe situation or an uninhabitable situation, and getting them into a place. We see their kids going to school. We see stability return to their lives,” she said. “Life changes when you get under one roof.”
Sherry became homeless about five years ago after the death of her first husband. She remarried about a year ago, and she and her husband got connected to The Care Service through the organization’s mobile outreach.
The Care Service helped her husband obtain a copy of his birth certificate and government ID, which paved the way for him to get a job. Even with full-time pay, though, the couple had trouble finding housing they could afford.
For Sherry, a home means not just a roof over her head at night but a place to cook her own meals. As a diabetic, living out of her car made it difficult to prioritize her health—she ended up in the hospital more than once—and now, she loves spending time in her open kitchen, cooking oven-roasted chicken and sitting down to enjoy it at her round dining table.
It also means room to share. The spare bedroom is all ready for a visit from Sherry’s three grandchildren, who live in mid-Missouri.
The Care Service employees are “like family now,” Sherry said. “If it wasn’t for them, I would probably still be in my car.”
Pam is grateful to the ACA supporters who continue to put faith in The Care Service and the other organizations serving people in need every day.
“We’re putting that faith into action, and we’re providing those people that we’re getting the funding for with a roof over their heads, and that provides safety, stability and hope,” she said. “It’s a place where they can start to rebuild.”
