The shuttering of places like the Colony House would indeed by a tragedy for families on the edge with no place left to go.

Donna Griffin arrived last June with her 7-year-old son, Dominick, and newborn, Gigi.

“(I was) down on my luck,” she said standing inside her Colony room between the Sponge Bob-sheeted bunk bed and the playpen.

Since then, she’s worked on her goals of learning to maintain stable housing, to be a good provider for her family and to get some life skills.

“It’s been very helpful,” Griffin said. “It’s hard sometimes being a single mom.”

After saving $1,000 through Community Action’s budgeting program, paying off her electric bill and enrolling her son in tutoring lessons, Griffin is preparing to move to transitional housing in Toby Farms.

She highlighted her son’s success.

“He got all As and Bs on his report card and he can read,” Griffin said. “He couldn’t read when he got here.”

Had the Colony program not been there a year ago, Griffin said the family might have had to be split apart.

“I don’t know where I would go,” she said.