The dining room could be in any of the three-story houses that make up this quiet residential neighborhood.

There’s a large, wooden table surrounded by chairs; several strollers and a small bicycle crammed into the room’s corners; and walls covered with photos of the mothers and children who have shared dinner here.

The house, called the Medford Life Family Education Center, provides transitional housing for eight families, most headed by young, single mothers. It is owned and operated by Heading Home, a nonprofit, Cambridge-based organization devoted to finding homes for Boston-area homeless.

Most of Heading Home’s $10 million annual budget comes from state and federal funding. But about $1.5 million each year comes from private donations, mainly from members of the Boston commercial real estate community.

CRE Insider met recently with Tom Lorello, Heading Home’s executive director; Marc Margulies, principal of Margulies Perruzzi Architects in Boston and Heading Home’s president; and Andrew Maher, managing director at Equity Office Properties in Boston who will and master of ceremonies of Heading Home’s “Housewarming” fundraising auction May 3 at the State Room.

Q: Tom, can you tell us about the organization, what facilities you have and what services you are providing?
A: Lorello: In the early 1970s, some people who lived in Central Square in Cambridge began to notice that there were more and more people sleeping outside in Central Square. At the time, they [the homeless] were all men. This group of people who were living in the area … pooled their money and rented an apartment. They were able to put up four men initially … In 1974, that little agency became incorporated as a nonprofit [originally as Shelter Inc.]. It was probably around 1980 the first time they received some public funding.

Q: How many properties does Heading Home own?
A: Lorello: This house. There’s also a family shelter on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston that puts up seven families a night right now. In Central Square in Cambridge, there is a 21-bed emergency shelter. And we have a number of other facilities that are permanent housing. All together, there are another eight buildings that we own, for a total of 11. We also rent a lot of apartments. That’s the main way we create housing. We operate a total of 250 units of different types of housing.

Q: How did the real estate industry get involved in supporting the organization?
A: Lorello: We understood that to end homelessness, housing is of central importance. … We felt like we needed to develop housing. That was really the only way to meaningfully pursue our mission. And what I always say is I realized that having social workers develop housing was just a really bad situation. … We really needed people who understood real estate to do this successfully. … People like Marc, we ask for his advice. When I look at a building, I need some professional eyes to tell me if this is a good deal so that we are, first of all, making good use of our donors’ money.
Margulies: One of the great things about Heading Home is that it’s an incredibly effective organization. … It’s clearly good at what it does. And there are ways that we can contribute that are more than just money, where you can actually see the impact.

Q: Marc, you have been involved with Heading Home for about 15 years, and designed several of the shelters, correct?
A: Margulies: We have been involved in the design of probably five. … The first project we did together, I thought, we ought to get this done in five months. And another consultant said, “Try 24.”’ There’s a lot of regulation, a lot of review; you have multiple funding sources. … You have to have all the neighborhood folks tied in. It just is very difficult, and, sadly, very slow-moving to be able to do development for these kinds of projects.

Q: What are some of the things your firms are doing to help Heading Home participants?
A: Maher: We do a thing where we take our team over to [the Cambridge shelter] on our own time. We’ll go over and bring over some holiday gifts, everyday things, toiletries … there’s two gift cards that have been a big hit – to the hair salon down the street and the movie theater. We do it just before Christmas, have lunch together, decorate their house. We’ve really developed a good relationship to the point where we did the “Up and Out Move.” We sponsored that event where one of the women was going from temporary housing to her own apartment. … We rented a truck, got all the gear and moved her from the Cambridge facility to the Waltham apartment. … Essentially, it was a makeover. [We donated] toiletries, kitchen stuff … a refrigerator, a bureau, a TV … It was a very fulfilling day. … It is a tangible feeling that we get, and the joy we get in seeing those people succeed. That “Moving Out” was inspirational to our team.
Margulies: Our firm is doing one [“Moving Out”] on April Fool’s Day. April 1 is the 24th anniversary of our firm. We don’t know the location yet, but it will be a family moving out of a shelter to permanent housing.
Lorello: What’s unique about Heading Home is that all of the housing we create comes with support services. We have trained staff that works with the people we put in housing. And their number-one priority is to make sure people have all the resources they need to stay housed. Then, as people get stabilized in housing, the goal becomes helping them move ahead in life.

Q: With the single mothers, it would be more job training?
A: Lorello: Yes, on the family side, there’s an extraordinary amount of potential. We’ve put together a creative and cutting-edge program. … It combines job development, financial literacy education and a specialized service we’re calling mobility mentoring. … We started out with 40 [clients] in 2009. We still have 36 in the program, all of whom are working in jobs with benefits. … They all have asset accounts open, so they’re saving. … We’ll match the savings for them. … And they’re all going through financial literacy education.
Margulies: I think we should mention that our major funder has been NAIOP for a number of years. There’s a golf tournament [June 6] that has raised $1.6 million over the years.
Maher: A lot of other organizations, and we support a ton of them, there might be a cocktail party and a great speech that makes you cry. But you don’t get the same hands-on relationship that you do [with Heading Home]. There’s a reason we all got into real estate, and it’s because we love the hands-on element.