Hamilton Family Center is grateful for the consultation of SFCARD and for the generous support of The San Francisco Foundation to assist us in preparing for an eventuality we hope we’ll never see.

“The San Francisco Foundation recognizes the critical role nonprofits can plan in the aftermath of a disaster. The Foundation will grant $25,000 each to 51 local organizations that are providing essential services – including food, shelter, healthcare, and mental healthcare – to Bay Area vulnerable communities in the first month following a disaster. These grantees also have committed to developing organizational emergency plans, enabling them to serve their communities quickly and effectively when they will be needed most; the Foundation is offering training and technical support to assist these organizations in their planning efforts.”

With heartfelt thanks, the board and staff of Hamilton Family Center appreciates the hard work of these dedicated students.  See the full story and more pictures by clicking here.

If you are going to be at the conference, please stop by and say hi to Beth, Devra, or Megan.

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Beth Stokes: Workshop Presenter

1:45 PM: Re-Tooling and Enhancing Family Support Services

This workshop will examine strategies to improve the effectiveness of family support services. Presenters will discuss how they transitioned from mandatory to client-centered, voluntary service models; shifted from a case management to a service brokerage and coordination system; and took steps to improve cultural competence.

Devra Edelman: Workshop Presenter

10:15 AM: Options and Strategies for Transitional Housing

This workshop will describe how transitional housing programs have improved their targeting strategies. It will also help participants explore options for converting transitional housing programs to permanent supportive housing, transition in place, or other models.

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Megan Owens: Workshop Presenter

10:15 AM: Improving Your Emergency Shelter Programs

Across the country, emergency shelter programs are overwhelmed by requests for assistance. This workshop will examine strategies that communities are relying on to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of shelter programs to respond to the increased demand and improve the services that are offered to families.

Assembly Bill 12 would let the state get federal money and help troubled children. It needs to pass.

The federal government offers funding to help states provide human services such as health and foster care, and that’s fine as far as it goes. But sometimes the money comes with the wrong strings. For example, the feds for too long paid states to pluck abused or neglected children from their homes and put them in foster care, even after California learned that it’s more cost effective and better for the kids to move them out of the program and into the homes of extended family members who, with a little financial help, can take care of them. Now the feds have caught up and provide funding, when appropriate, to steer kids out of the child welfare system while providing them the support they need to grow up and transition to college, jobs and adulthood.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-foster27-2010jan27,0,2914768.story

Earlier this year, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimated that 1.5 million people would be made homeless over the next two years as a result of the recession. In this series of profiles, DailyFinance speaks with some of the people who have fallen victim to layoffs, foreclosure, unforgiving creditors and plain old bad financial luck. Here are their stories.

The descent into homelessness can occur with terrifying speed. For a 33-year-old aspiring Web developer, it happened after an emergency loan from a relative suddenly fell through, driving his family out of a motel and onto the streets of San Francisco in September.

His wife and two kids were lucky to get a bed at a shelter, but there was no room for him. So he ended up spending four nights in Golden Gate Park.

“I couldn’t believe it,  I wasn’t technically well off, but I could keep a job, and I was thinking, ‘How the hell did I get here?’”

Just one year ago, everything seemed possible. he was living with his family and was in the middle of an exciting career change. After a decade of working as a chef, he was looking forward to finding a job as a Web developer. To make ends meet while he was finishing up a bachelor of science degree in software engineering at a state university, he was working for a company that did catering for private jets.

In February, the catering company he worked for dramatically cut his hours. People just weren’t flying in private jets much anymore. He was no longer able to pay the bills and started collecting unemployment, which he viewed as a stopgap measure until he could graduate in June and get a job working for a technology firm.

By the time graduation came, however, he was confronted with a sobering reality: “I was looking for tech jobs all over the place, but no one would hire a guy fresh out of college,” he says. “I was even looking for restaurant jobs, but restaurants had all cut back as no one was going out to eat.”

The family decided to make a bold, if risky, move. In the beginning of September, they scraped together what little money they had left and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area, the nation’s tech mecca, where they were certain he would find a job. For weeks, the family stayed in cheap hotel rooms while looking for work, cold-calling recruiters and sending out resumes.

Toward the end of September, the unemployment money that was supposed to last them through the entire month ran out. Their only option was to try to get beds in one of San Francisco’s shelters, already maxed-out with all of the other newly homeless looking for places to sleep.

The family ended up at Hamilton Family Center in San Francisco. The city has the highest per capita rate of homelessness — nearly 1 for every 100 residents — of any major U.S. city. Even more disturbing is that homelessness is increasingly a family affair here. As many as 40% of homeless people in San Francisco are part of a homeless family.

“It’s organizations like ours that are the last safety nets for this community,” says Hamilton Family Center’s Executive Director Beth Stokes, adding that funding cuts are leaving this net increasingly frayed. “We’re all worried about what’s going to happen next year.”

But there was only enough space in the shelter for his wife and their children, ages 6 and 4. That’s when he headed to Golden Gate Park. “I found a little private bush and made sure nobody saw me.”

After four nights sleeping outside, another unemployment check came through. The money allowed the family to move back into a cheap motel in early November. A few weeks later, they finally caught a break. Thanks to money made available through the federal economic stimulus program, Hamilton Family Center was able to enroll the family in its First Avenues program, which helps families keep or find homes, depending on their situation. Since it started in 2006, First Avenues has prevented 375 families from getting evicted and helped another 500 homeless families get permanent housing.

Through the program, which will last 18 months, the family has received money for a deposit on an apartment in Oakland, as well as assistance paying  rent.

“It’s a really nice unit,” he says. “The kids are less stressed out.”

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, at Hamilton Family Center we are working hard to identify resources for the upcoming food-centered holiday. Yet, it’s during this time, I’m compelled to reflect upon the fact that family hunger does not take a holiday, for the families we work with, food insecurity is a daily struggle.

In the 2008, United Conference of Mayors, Hunger and Homelessness Survey, the following was cited:

• The majority (59%) of persons requesting food assistance were in families

• Cities identified the three main causes of hunger as:

1. Poverty (83%)
2. Unemployment (74%)
3. High cost of housing (57%)

At Hamilton Family Center our mission is focused on serving this very same population. Every day we work with families living in homelessness and poverty; the majority being unemployed and struggling to find affordable housing in San Francisco.

The battle for low-income, working families to make ends meet continues to be hampered by record unemployment rates. Last week it was announced that the national unemployment rate jumped above 10%, and is now at 10.2%. This disheartening news, coupled with an economy that continues to struggle, can only result in a heightened demand for food assistance.

The confluence of these factors, a downturn economy and record unemployment, has resulted in skyrocketing family homelessness. The increase in demand for basic need services, including shelter and food assistance, comes at a time when resources are more limited and funding is down.

Yet, at Hamilton Family Center, despite these gloomy forecasts, we are undeterred and will continue in our efforts to mitigate the disturbing increases in family hunger and homelessness. Hamilton Family Center annually serves over 113,000 meals to homeless families; provides up to 75 food boxes a month to very low-income, food insecure families; and hosts a weekly food pantry.

Hunger does not take a holiday, so please join us and “Share Your Harvest”. Help us to end family hunger and poverty in our community.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Beth Stokes

We are grateful to the Hamlin School for their generous support for our programs and for homeless families in our community.

– Lisa Matthews

Hamilton Family Center will lead this collaboration intended to target and rapidly re-house the critical need population of homeless families, transitioning youth and survivors of domestic violence. The eligible 60 households will receive a shallow rental subsidy over the course of 18 months. In addition to financial assistance, the program provides home-based support services designed to assist families and youth to remain stably housed once the time-limited subsidy ends.

Studies consistently show that subsidized housing has helped families to exit and remain out of shelter. (Marybeth Shinn, Ending Homelessness for Families: The Evidence of Affordable Housing, 2009.)

It is the goal of the Rapid Re-Housing Program administered by this ground-breaking collaboration to move families from homelessness into homes that are sustainable, safe, and affordable. “With homeless households on the rise and our shelters full, San Francisco is in great need of more permanent housing resources for homeless families and youth. HUD’s Rapid Re-housing Program will allow us to creatively house a homeless population in critical need. We are very excited to lead this dynamic collaboration,” Beth Stokes, MSW, Executive Director, Hamilton Family Center.

ABOUT HAMILTON FAMILY CENTER:

The mission of Hamilton Family Center is to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty. Through a Housing First approach, we provide a continuum of housing solutions and comprehensive services that promote self-sufficiency for families and individuals, and foster the potential of children and youth.

Established in 1985, Hamilton Family Center is nationally recognized as a leader in innovative programming and interventions in homelessness prevention, rapid re-housing, emergency and transitional shelter, educational and recreational programming for children, direct financial assistance, and home-based support services.  Our comprehensive services include:

• Eviction Prevention
• Home-Based Case Management
• Rental Subsidies
• Housing Placement Assistance
• Technology Access & Education
• Children & Youth Programming
• Nutritious Meals Served Daily
• 24-hour Emergency Shelter
• Food Pantries
• Specialized Transitional Housing
• Wage & Employment Sustainability
• Permanent Supportive Housing
• Asset Management