About Us
Above all else, we are driven by the belief that every person deserves a home. Addressing homelessness is immensely critical and complicated. We come alongside your community, partnership, or nonprofit to stand in the eye of the housing and public health crisis.
If you are looking for a team who is committed to helping navigate the murky waters of housing, behavioral health, and homeless services, we are here to partner. We are experienced, passionate, and sincerely motivated to see our partnerships become more adaptive, move to action, and scale impact.
Why Partner With Us
01
Creativity
The old answers aren’t working. The systems are broken. And have disconnected a person’s housing from their health. The road out of this public health crisis takes creativity, urgency, and a willingness to helpfully critique the path that got us here.
02
Collaboration
The heart of systems change is in our public-private partnerships. We facilitate community wide change to challenge the status quo and design a new, expanded system of care. Clarity on which partners drive our community strategy and which drive our programming.
03
Competence
We’ve been working on homelessness issues since 2009 and retain the fire in our bellies. We bring a foundation of nonprofit management, social work, government, and financial management experience.
Our Company Story
We are a benefit corporation based in Philadelphia. Formed in 2023, the company brings together two old friends to focus on the issue they care most about – ending homelessness. It’s the cause that first brought them together in 2016 when Shaun became the AmeriCorps member of CATCH, a Housing First nonprofit based in Boise, Idaho, where Wyatt was the Executive Director. Relocating back to Philly during the COVID pandemic honed our commitment to making a difference in our home state.
The story of our home state is a story of families struggling to earn an honest wage to put food on the table. It’s our story too, our grandparents put an honest living to sustain the roof over their head, working the farm or the steel mill. The hemlock and the forge.
It’s deeply personal to us that every city, town, borough, and hamlet in Pennsylvania and Delaware ensures a safe and stable home for its neighbors. (Wyatt was born in Delaware, so he greedily claims both states.)
Our Team
Wyatt Schroeder, MBA
Executive Director | he/him/his
Wyatt has worked on the issue of homelessness and affordable housing for over 13 years, stemming from a fervent belief that everyone deserves a safe, stable, and affordable home. He has served roles from executive nonprofit leadership to grassroots organizer to local government official.
Wyatt serves as the Director of Hemlock & Forge, a supportive housing consultancy focused on ending homelessness in the Mid-Atlantic. He also serves as the Advisor for Social Determinants at Bowling Business Strategies, a behavioral health consulting firm providing services across the nation.
Prior to launching Hemlock & Forge, Wyatt was the Director of Community Partnerships for the City of
Boise, guiding all social service partnerships for City Hall. He has served a number of roles in his work on housing equity, including Executive Director of CATCH, Idaho’s largest supportive housing agency and Senior Manager at Agnew::Beck Consulting, serving communities in Idaho and Alaska by designing and managing public-private partnerships that led to the development of affordable housing and increased housing outcomes for marginalized populations.
Wyatt is proud to have been a key leader in the development of Our Path Home, the public-private
partnership in Ada County, Idaho dedicated to ending homelessness. This leadership led to the creation of the state’s first coordinated entry system on homelessness; developing New Path Community Housing, the state’s first Housing First-based supportive housing building; and launching the Campaign to End Family Homelessness, a five-year strategy to bring aggressive philanthropy and innovative service design to achieve functional zero.
Wyatt holds a Master of Business Administration from Villanova University and a Bachelor of Arts from Allegheny College, and a professional certificate on Real Estate Development from Fordham University. You can find him living in Philadelphia, PA, watching baseball or sneaking into the Wissahickon for the afternoon or on his stoop with a guitar in his hand.
Sam Oppenheimer, LICSW
Director of Supportive Services | she/they
Sam is a dynamic leader who has dedicated the last 15 years to collaborating with community leaders, providers, clients, funders, and government officials to expand the vision of what a homeless response system can achieve.
In their current role as Director of Supportive Services at Hemlock and Forge, they are instrumental in developing robust frameworks, policies, and trainings that build supportive housing pipelines across Pennsylvania and Delaware. Sam is dedicated to driving systems-level change and fostering equitable, anti-oppressive systems of care. They firmly believe that “oppression is the absence of choices,” (bell hooks), and center the voices of those most impacted by inequitable systems in their work. They affirm in their work that people should not need to share their story to be deserving of care as housing is a fundamental human right.
Previously, as Policy & Operations Director at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), Sam successfully launched and oversaw the Peer Navigation program, which served people living unsheltered in downtown Seattle using a Housing Command Center model. They developed the policies and infrastructure to transition the program from philanthropic to Medicaid (FCS) funding. Prior to their role at the KCRHA, Sam worked for seven years at Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), the agency which pioneered Housing First Permanent Supportive Housing on the West Coast. During their tenure they served in roles ranging from outreach case manager to Senior Program Manager of Clinical Entry Services. They believe that there is no such thing as someone who is “difficult to serve,” but rather that we operate in systems that actively disempower not only those who need the most support, but also those tasked with providing that support.
Sam has extensive formal training in advanced clinical skills. They are proficient in Motivational Interviewing, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), Seeking Safety, Integrated Dual Diagnosis Treatment (IDDT), and Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (CBT). Their skills also encompass critical areas such as Housing First Fidelity, Harm Reduction, Opioid Overdose Response, Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention, and Nonviolent Crisis Intervention, complemented by training in ethical decision-making within harm reduction frameworks and specialized supervision models for multidisciplinary clinical teams. They are a certified trainer for DESC’s Vulnerability Assessment Tool (VAT) and Cultures Connecting: Strategies for Facilitating Courageous Conversations on Race. They hold an active Independent Clinical Social Worker license in the State of Washington and a Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University.