St. Margaret of
Castello's House

The Frassati Threshold Cottages

In most of the world, the worst day in a foster child’s life is their eighteenth birthday — the day the system’s obligations end and its predictions begin. Within a few years of aging out unsupported, staggering numbers of these young people face homelessness, and the ‘services cliff’ our whole foundation exists to condemn claims them a second time.

Named for Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati—the mountain-climbing young patron of adulthood’s ascent, who spent his short life giving everything to the poor and whose motto was verso l’alto, “to the heights”—the Frassati Threshold Cottages are our answer: semi-independent homes on the campus perimeter where adulthood is climbed with a rope team, not fallen into alone.

  • The Cliff Ends Here

    The evidence is plain: young people supported past eighteen do measurably better in education, housing, and work. So at St. Margaret’s, eighteen is not an exit. It is an address change of about two hundred yards.

  • Your Own Key, Your Own Budget

    Threshold residents hold their own key, buy their own groceries, cook their own suppers, and make their own mistakes — because independence is a skill built by practicing it, and the dignity of risk applies to twenty-year-olds most of all.

  • A Scaffold, Not Surveillance

    Weekly life-skills coaching, on-call (not live-in) staff, and full continued access to every campus service — the clinical wings, the guilds, the chapel, and a seat at the family table by standing invitation.

  • The Door Never Locks Behind You

    A Threshold graduate who stumbles at twenty-three can come back — for help, for a meal, for a month — without shame and without ceremony. That is not program policy. That is what family means.

The Four Pillars of the Threshold Cottages

Semi-Independent Living

Focus: Real adult life, practiced in real rooms, with the net close but invisible.

Components

  • Perimeter Cottages & Apartments Genuinely independent living spaces on campus edge — private, self-run, and inspected only as leases are.
  • The Threshold Compact A written mutual agreement — work or school engagement, community norms, and what each side owes the other — signed as adults sign things: freely.
  • Graduated Autonomy Support that visibly steps back as competence steps up, on the resident’s own timeline, typically across ages eighteen to twenty-four.

Work, Wages & Savings

Focus: The economic footing that turns adulthood from threat to plan.

Components

  • Real Jobs, Real References Paid campus roles — kitchen, grounds, guild assistant — at real wages with real reviews, alongside support into outside employment.
  • Matched Savings A matched-savings program building each resident’s first real cushion — first apartment, first car, first tuition payment.
  • Money Literacy in Practice Budgeting with actual budgets, credit built carefully, and the financial predators who circle aged-out youth named and warded off.

Coaching & Continued Care

Focus: The adult skills and steady adults every young person deserves on the climb.

Components

  • Weekly Life Coaching One consistent coach per resident — logistics, decisions, setbacks, and the Tuesday check-in that never stops coming.
  • Full Clinical Access Continued therapy, medical care, and the Sabbatical when burnout gathers — adult services without re-qualifying, re-explaining, or re-traumatizing.
  • Education & Credential Support GED, trade certification, college applications, and the paperwork of ambition — carried together.

The Way Forward & the Way Back

Focus: Launching well — and the promise that launching is not leaving.

Components

  • Transition at the Resident’s Pace Movement to fully independent housing when the resident is ready — not when a birthday says so.
  • The Castello Circle Handoff Automatic lifetime membership, homecoming invitations, and the alumni network waiting on the other side.
  • The Return Clause The standing right to come back — for help, respite, or simply supper — written into the Compact, because the door that never locks is the whole point.

The Christ’s Most Invisible Initiative

All twelve programmes