 | This article reads like a press release or a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage .(September 2015) |
Community Housing Partnership is a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, California, that provides housing, job training and other services to people formerly living in homelessness. Founded in 1990, it owns and operates 14 residential buildings and collaborates with other organizations in its goals.
The organization offers housing, job training, case management, community organizing, resident engagement and other support services to the formerly homeless. It began "with the idea that many homeless people suffer posttraumatic stress disorder and that this cycle wouldn't be broken unless they have a longer-term supportive community to live in." Since Community Housing Partnership was founded in 1990, more than a thousand housing units have been provided to help over 2,200 people. [1] It is one of the city's "largest supportive-housing providers," and it provides specialized services for people with disabilities and mental-health or substance-abuse challenges. [2]
Community Housing Partnership sprang from the destruction wreaked upon San Francisco by the massive Loma Prieta earthquake of October 1989, which damaged or destroyed scores of buildings and left some twelve thousand people homeless. "Almost all of the homeless shelters I worked with had to empty out because they were in bad shape," recalled Paul Boden, organizing director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. In the earthquake aftermath, some financial support became available for property owners and renters with long-term leases, but no help was forthcoming for the homeless and low-income residents. A Navy aircraft carrier entered San Francisco Bay to provide some shelter for the homeless, Boden said. [3]
Boden and fellow board members of the Coalition on Homelessness Joe Wilson, Greg Francis and Laura Ware had earlier written a proposal for San Francisco to build permanent housing for the homeless "instead of just temporary shelters." San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos allocated some $2.2 million from the city's earthquake relief fund to put the proposal into action. A year later, Community Housing Partnership was opened. [1] [2]
In 2014 it had a staff of more than 280, "many of whom have experienced homelessness first-hand." It had an annual operating budget of about $25 million. [4]
Community Housing Partnership owns and operates the first new residential building in the San Francisco Transbay development area south of Mission Street, the Rene Cazenave Apartments, which has 120 units of supportive housing for the "chronically homeless." The eight-story, $42.7 million building was designed by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects, which joined not only with Community Housing Partnership but also with Bridge Housing in the development. Architectural Record noted that "the building’s first-floor plan encourages residents to take advantage of support services such as substance abuse counseling and psychotherapy, placing them prominently along the primary circulation corridor. This internal “Main Street” is wide and daylit through 7.5-foot-diameter skylights." The magazine quoted architect Richard Stacy as saying: “We wanted to get away from the idea that there was any stigma attached to using these services.” [5]
The units are modestly sized—most are 320-foot studios—but pleasantly bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows. The apartments, conceived by associate architects Saida + Sullivan Design Partners, have thoughtful touches like up- and down-lighting in the kitchen, to set apart that area from the rest of the apartment’s entry hall. The residents pay 30 percent of their income in rent, an average of $375 a month. The units are arranged along double-loaded corridors in groups of four to provide a sense of community within the larger whole. The massing breaks down into four smaller towers connected by elevators, stairs, and utility rooms. In some places, the towers are bridged by additional living space, creating horizontal bands that add to the diversity of the facade, which is clad in aqua-colored and naturally gray fiber-cement rainscreen panels. [5]
In 2014 Community Housing Partnership, with its thousand units of "supportive housing," began working on a plan to "free up" at least 100 units each year by moving residents out of them into "below-market-rate housing, public housing or market-rate" rentals, thus making room for new tenants to begin a climb up a "housing ladder," said Executive Director Gail Gilman. [2]
In the same year, Community Housing Partnership was a collaborator with the city, Larkin Street Youth Services and neighborhood groups in the transformation of the Edward II Inn from a 1914-era tourist hotel into a 24-unit supportive-housing site for "transitional-age youths" aged 18 to 24, with residents paying 30 percent of their adjusted income as rent. It opened in 2014 in the Marina-Cow Hollow area, with a community kitchen and private baths. [6] [7] Also in 2014, Community Housing Partnership opened a new 2,800-square-foot training center focused on training in basic customer-service and computer skills. [4]
By July 2012 the organization had trained about a hundred formerly homeless people in a 10-week program that taught them how to teach their neighbors about compost collection and recycling practice. [8] The San Francisco Chronicle reported that:
Enrollees, who are not paid for their work, learn about resource conservation, environmental justice and urban agriculture, and receive basic job support, including computer skills and an overview of the green jobs sector. As part of the program, they're also required to provide zero-waste outreach within their buildings, playing a critical role in bringing the city's subsidized, low-income housing in line with mandatory composting and recycling laws. [8]
In 2007 the organization began a partnership with nonprofit REDF to begin a "social venture" called Solutions SF, dedicated to training and employing the formerly homeless for jobs in "lobby service," which entailed serving at the front desk of "affordable and supportive housing" buildings. Some clients were also hired as full-time employees in property management businesses in San Francisco, and they all learned "customer-service skills that are transferable to other fields," said Gail Gilman, Community Housing Partnership's executive director. [9]
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous city in California, with 808,437 residents, and the 17th most populous city in the United States as of 2022. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include Frisco, San Fran, The City, and SF.
Arthur Christ Agnos is an American politician. He served as the 39th mayor of San Francisco, California from 1988 to 1992 and as the Regional Head of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 to 2001.
Supportive housing is a combination of housing and services intended as a cost-effective way to help people live more stable, productive lives, and is an active "community services and funding" stream across the United States. It was developed by different professional academics and US governmental departments that supported housing. Supportive housing is widely believed to work well for those who face the most complex challenges—individuals and families confronted with homelessness and who also have very low incomes and/or serious, persistent issues that may include substance use disorders, mental health, HIV/AIDS, chronic illness, diverse disabilities or other serious challenges to stable housing.
Single room occupancy is a form of housing that is typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes, or single adults who like a minimalist lifestyle, who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres. In some instances, contemporary units may have a small refrigerator, microwave, or sink.
The Edwin is a three-storey building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada operated by WoodGreen Community Services to provide community housing. It incorporates the former New Edwin Hotel, built in 1905 to serve as a hotel for railway passengers coming from a now closed railway station at the foot of the Don Valley. It is located at the intersection of Queen Street East and Carroll Street, east of the Don River, in the Riverside subdistrict of South Riverdale.
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The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. Encompassing about 50 square blocks, it is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Street.
The Coalition on Homelessness is an American homeless advocacy and social justice organization that focuses on creating long-term solutions to homelessness, poverty, and housing issues in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1987, the group also founded the newspaper Street Sheet and the Community Housing Partnership. It is based on Turk Street in the Tenderloin district.
The Venice Community Housing Corporation (VCHC) was formed in 1988 by a group of grassroots activists who were interested in preserving affordable housing in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Since that time, VCHC has grown to a comprehensive community development corporation with family support programs, gang prevention programs, job training and affordable housing.
Compass Family Services is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in San Francisco, California, that provides a wide variety of human services to homeless and at-risk of homelessness families. In 2019, they served 6,000 parents and children. Its services include intake and referral to shelter, emergency shelter, transitional housing, and childcare—in addition to a broad spectrum of counseling, parenting education, prevention, and support services.
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Project HOME is a nationally recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides housing, opportunities for employment, medical care and education to homeless and low-income persons in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Berkeley Food and Housing Project is a nonprofit organization serving homeless men, women, and children in Berkeley, California and other parts of Northern California. BFHP is one of the largest homeless service providers in the East Bay.
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London Nicole Breed is an American politician who is the 45th and current mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. She was supervisor for District 5 and was president of the Board of Supervisors from 2015 to 2018.
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