What were the dates your faith organization operated the program?

Transcription

1 Most Holy Trinity What were the dates your faith organization operated the program? Most Holy Trinity Homeless Shelter opened for 3 non-consecutive weeks. The weeks of operation were: February 7-14, March and March 28-April 4. What was the target population? Men at the Tully Road encampment and San Jose downtown area. What was the total number of people who were served? We served 12 men and a family of four. Total 16 What was the total number of volunteers who engaged? We average 25 volunteers per week. What were some significant successes to running this program? We learned firsthand how the homeless are perceived in a negative manner and that they want a sense of filling normal. They mentioned to us that we gave them back their dignity and treated them with respect. Hopefully we establish long lasting friendly relationship. One of the homeless helps with the food pantry on Wednesdays and helps with feeding the homeless at the Tully Road encampment. Were there any major issues or concerns while operating the program? We minimized some of our concerns by screening the homeless guests and set-up guidelines that we expected each guest to follow. Our major concern is what next. How can we continue to help our homeless guest with shelter or shelter resources since there are not a lot of housing or shelters available for the homeless. What were some unmet needs that could benefit the program going forward? Monitoring funding-we had a difficult time finding volunteers to monitor the homeless during the evening/morning. From discussions with the other churches providing shelter, we mentioned that finding monitors was our biggest problem. Transportation- Transporting the homeless from one pick-up point to another. Most Holy Trinity was fortunate to have vans available for the second and third shelter rotations. This ensured that the guests would be able to and from the shelters. What are the rough cost estimates of what it took the faith organization to provide the services, if available?

2 A rough cost estimate would be $3000. What would you do differently next time, if applicable? Begin early planning of our needs, supplies, food, volunteers, financial resources, etc. Other thoughts and comments? We are planning to recommend not only shelter the homeless but providing a Safe Park for families living in vehicles. Also, having some kind of homeless awareness training

3 Evaluation of Holy Spirit Homeless Shelter January/February 2016 Mike Ferrero, Director of Social Ministries Number of people served We served 15 women, most referred by the Valley Homeless Heathcare Program. Most were fragile with medical issues that made them most vulnerable. Number of volunteers engaged We had more than 600 volunteers who helped with meals, overnight supervision, intake, medical supervision, laundry, transportation, and campus security. Successes o VHHP was successful in screening and referring clients and case management for the women in the shelter. o Huge outpouring of volunteer support from the parish. Many of them established caring relationships with the women who stayed with us for four weeks. o The impact on the parish was enormous. Our visitors went from the homeless to individual women who parishioners are concerned for. o We made life a little better for 28 days for the women who came to stay with us. o From the time Holy Spirit decided to open a shelter, we attracted three other partner churches to shelter the women; Willow Glen Methodist, St. Francis Cabrini, and St. Martin of Tours. Allowed for the women to stay sheltered until mid-april. We also partnered with Almaden Methodist Church and St. Francis Episcopal to provide warming centers to house our guests during the day. o Holy Spirit created an Operational Manual for other churches to use. This proved to be one of our most valuable contributions to other churches starting up shelters of their own. o Holy Spirit ran its volunteer sign-up effort through an online service called Volunteer Spot. It has become the tool most other churches used to manage their shelter volunteer program. o Some of our volunteers followed the shelter rotation and signed up to help at other churches in the rotation. o Opposition to the shelter by some school families was kept to a minimum through communications and proactive outreach by church and school administration. Emphasis was placed on security and keeping the campus safe. o Parish leadership is now engaged on the homeless issue and committed to expanding our ministry in this area. Any major issues or concerns while operating program

4 o No major issues. A process of screening and referring individuals to the shelter became important we re able to do that with the County. o Other issues might include difficulties with transportation. The County provided bus passes for their clients, but we needed vans or cars to transport our guests to light rail or warming centers. Bus transportation is spotty in our area. o Shower facilities are critical. We rented a unit for $5500 for the month. Some churches may struggle with the cost. o Many of our guests were medically fragile. We were fortunate to have a medical types; EMT, RN, MD, etc., every night in the church. Many churches may not have these volunteer resources. o Due to many of the issues facing our guests, flexibility became a necessary guideline in managing the program day to day. o The prospect of many of our women returning to life on the streets following the rotational shelter was deeply troubling for many of us. Unmet needs that could benefit the program going forward o Assistance from designated caseworker. Rough cost estimates of what it took the Church to provide the service, if available o Approximately $10,000 Other thoughts and comments o The action by the City to suspend parts of the church shelter ordinance was critical to enabling us to do this rotating shelter. The shelter would not have gotten off the ground had a public hearing in this community been a requirement to obtaining a permit. It is imperative for the City and the faith community to come up with a better process for working collaboratively on this problem. There is a yearning in many of our churches to do more, but public hearings, expensive fees, and limitations to 15 persons and 35 days per year, are stumbling blocks for creativity and innovation. This year was a patchwork solution because of El Nino, but we need a way to look at year-round shelter opportunities. It is hard to encourage churches to change themselves into shelters both logistically and politically. We need a partner to help us do that.

5 St John Vianney Safe Parking Planning: Below are some of the more important planning steps and mtgs, but not all are mentioned here. 1) Nov 17th, Diocesan mtg: Homelessness and Cold Weather 2) Dec, 9th SJV mtg with Fr Steve, Mike (Parish Administrator), core team (~6-12 folks who are active in parish and/or members of Faith in Action, PACT or St Vincent de Paul); Bob Dolci (County) who did a presentation 3) Dec 16th, 23rd, 30th wkly discussion/planning mtgs with core team 4) Dec 14th, Darby started attending weekly Winter Faith Collaborative mtgs 5) Jan 7th,14th, wkly mtgs with core team 6) Through Jan and Feb, weekly bulletin announcements and short articles on the unhoused and our parish response to it. Our contact number was listed for questions/concerns. 7) Jan 9th/10th, 1st Holy Spirit video presented at all masses; sign ups for Homeless Outreach Ministry 8) Jan 16th/17th, Stewardship/Outreach tables with information on new Homeless Outreach Ministry after every mass 9) Jan 24th/25th, 2nd Holy Spirit video presented at all masses; Outreach Ministry members invite volunteers to participate 10) Jan. 26th, beginning of weekly parish Homeless Outreach Ministry mtgs 11) Feb 3rd, presentation to parish council for Safe Parking program approval (passed with some contingencies) 12) Feb 5th, mtg with Sr Michele Anne (school) 13) Feb 8th, mtg with David Couch for facilities discussion 14) Feb 15th, SP guidelines drawn up and approved at weekly mtg 15) Feb 18th, set up VolunteerSpot to facilitate volunteer sign ups 16) Feb 23rd, flyers taken around to all houses neighboring the SJV parking lot 17) Feb 23rd,1st volunteer training conducted by Andrew Lanier (Casa de Clara) 18) Feb 27th/28th, mass announcements by HOM team inviting parish to participate and come to 2nd training, Monday, Feb 29th 19) Feb 27th, Garage (Hospitality Lounge) clean up, organizing tables, supplies 20) Feb 29th, 2nd volunteer training 21) Mar, ongoing appeals for esp overnight volunteers Issues: 1) Overnight volunteers; especially difficult to find overnight monitors; we revised our overnight volunteer proposal to reduce it to one man or two women at night, with further note that they could sleep as long as they conducted a check around 11 PM to make sure gates were locked 2) Finding guests for overnight parking we didn t get the referrals from county homeless services and other agencies as was originally the understanding; it became the job of each site to locate, interview and register their guests. Our goal was small-to have 5 cars (families) per night, but on the majority of nights, there were only 2 cars; we did have 3 and 4 cars for a few nights (one small family who found housing), but we mainly had a couple and a single woman. We revised our guest description from families only to families, couples and single women. Our thought was that families were fearful of coming into a new environment-even a church setting-having to be interviewed, and fear of being reported to CPS.

6 3) Neighbor and school parent issues flyers given to immediate parking lot neighbors with complete information on our SP program and church contact number for any questions. We had no calls resulting from the flyer. There were a few neighbors who came out negatively on Next Door after the TV spot, based on unfounded fear, i.e. SJV is going to have a homeless encampment; a parishioner who is also on Next Door responded with a detailed description of our SP program; vast majority of responses after that were very positive a few school parents had concerns, including one set who sent us a detailed letter with very strong (over-the-top requests). We answered each of their concerns in detail. A few parents voiced concerns to some of the parent volunteers who were able to answer their concerns (we didn t hear directly from them). There was no request for us to do a presentation. Positives: 1) over 130 parishioners signed up to volunteer; over 60 volunteers completed at least one volunteer slot; we had show up to all mtgs including the pot luck and follow up mtg at the end of April 2) at the follow up mtg, the majority of participants voted to continue with the ministry (we are now in a new planning process) 3) we had many donations, including new blankets, food, money, toiletries 4) we had calls and s from non-parishioners who wanted to help; a St Victor s parishioner; St Elizabeth s, met with 2 Episcopalian priests 5) the SJV school children put together Blessing Bags for our guests as well as many additional bags that were given to both MHT and also given out to other homeless by one of our guests. 6) several school parents and their children volunteered; especially for dinner and breakfast 7) the program shined a positive light on East San Jose Evaluation/Survey: We sent out an evaluation/survey via Google Doc to everyone on our volunteer list. We received back 28 responses. 1) Overall, very positive: 2) Felt the mtgs and trainings were very helpful and felt comfortable with the guests; two volunteers with children said that it was a very, very good experience for them 3) Suggestions: bring in outside speakers; perhaps unhoused or formerly unhoused work on ways to assist more guests (more referrals from agencies) more ways to create outreach create sub-committees to assist with various volunteer duties, i.e., food committee to manage dinner/breakfast volunteers, publicity committee to organize parish & community presentations work collaboratively with other parishes, churches to do something on a rotating basis any possibility of doing self-monitored SP (probably not given that we have a school on campus) more outreach to school and larger community

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