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Weekly UpdatesTo combat the seemingly intractable challenges facing homeless families and individuals, supporting organizations and government entities are finding that offering one-stop locations offers benefits. This new concept is vibrantly and fully realized in a new San Antonio initiative, the Haven for Hope Homeless Campus.
The campus is the focus of a mobile workshop being offered at the 2009 Congress of Cities and Exposition, held November 10-14 in San Antonio. Most of the campus will be completed this winter and mobile workshop participants will be among the first to view it at this early stage of development. Visitors will have the opportunity to hear about the partner agencies that will work in the campus and the wide range of transformative services that will be available to campus residents.
Haven for Hope staff will speak about the ClientTrack system and the Docent Program, which relies on committed volunteers. Visitors will also be given a guided tour of the campus and have the opportunity to talk to agency representatives currently serving clients and, if the opportunity allows, other community residents receiving services.
"The Haven for Hope Homeless Campus tour is an example of the immediate access to innovative programs and projects that participation in the Congress of Cities allows," explains conference planners. "Mobile workshop participants will have first-hand and early access to this transformational campus and learn about how to develop similar projects directly from those working on it."
The Circumstances
To address the problems of hunger and homelessness, the City of San Antonio established the Mayor's Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness in the summer of 2003, comprised of representatives of the community, as well as agencies serving the homeless and providing food assistance. The mayor charged the task force with developing short and long-term strategies for addressing the problem.
In January 2005, the city council adopted a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. The plan drew input from the San Antonio/Bexar County Continuum of Care's 2003 Census as well as from the Continuum of Cafe's members and other key community leaders.
That same year, Steve Spriester, a news anchor for local ABC affiliate KSAT 12, did a 30-minute special on homelessness that caught the eye of business and civic leader Bill Greehey, former chair of Valero Energy. Greehey subsequently championed the issue of preventing and addressing homelessness in San Antonio. As a result of his interest and passion to make systematic changes and with the support of the former mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger, the city committed to accelerating the implementation of its 10-year plan.
Citizen Support
In November 2006, the city council approved the development of a Homeless Campus. For the first time, San Antonio was given a business model for addressing homelessness, which contributed to gaining the community's support. The Haven for Hope Homeless Campus came about as a result of a strong and productive public-private partnership.
The campus will provide a wide range of social services to meet the needs of San Antonio's homeless community in a "one-stop" setting. Far beyond shelter, food and clothing, Haven for Hope's services will be geared to combat the root causes of homelessness, with dozens of partner agencies providing the services. The current economic crisis has only reinforced the community's commitment to addressing homelessness and preventing vulnerable families from becoming homeless.
Project Description and Benefits
The goal of Haven for Hope is to successfully transform the homeless community in San Antonio into a working and self-sufficient community. Haven for Hope will be following its graduates and measuring their retention in both permanent housing and employment. In addition, with the opening of the campus and the work that is currently done by the Public Safety Triage and Detox Facility, the partners expect to see a measureable decrease in the jail and hospital systems, which are often overcrowded and overused by this population.
It will be the intent of the campus to become the central point for the city's homeless population to include their shelter, food and medical needs thereby reducing the numbers of homeless throughout the community seeking services.
Securing Public and Private Support
The development of the campus enjoyed public and private support from the beginning. Nonetheless, there were issues that required further collaboration and discussions. The following were keys steps to creating the campus: 1) choosing an appropriate site, 2) negotiating and assembling the land purchases, 3) gaining project support from the neighboring community, 4) fundraising for the $98 million construction campaign, and 5) engaging partner support.
For the city and Haven for Hope, it was important to create a dialogue with the neighboring community that this was an effort to change the way they addressed homelessness and that the development of the campus would not hurt the community, but instead would revitalize the neighborhood.
Additionally, Haven for Hope worked closely with community agencies to assure them that their role as partners is key to the success of the campus and that joining the campus would not threaten their identity as independent agencies or diminish their work. On the contrary, for partner agencies joining the campus, this represented an opportunity to provide services in a one-stop setting, which would allow them to coordinate and join efforts with other service providers.
Lessons Learned
First and foremost, the most important item that was learned was to visit and learn from other campuses and communities, and identify best practices. The city team was led by City Manager Sheryl Sculley, who is a strong advocate of the project and offered a wealth of experience in successful public-private partnerships and building strong political and community consensus.
This complex project required, community, elected officials and city leadership support to get off the ground and become a reality. In order to undertake something as comprehensive as the Haven for Hope model, it is imperative to become as educated as possible about the people who are going to be served, the services that are available today and the way in which one would like to see these services improved. Part of the work in the research/development phase of the campus was visiting other campuses and learning about their best practices and critical success factors, such as the importance of having master case management, seamless services and community partnerships.
Details: To register for this or other mobile workshops at the 2009 Congress of Cities and Exposition, visit www.nlc congressofcities.org.
Robert Marbut Jr. is the president/CEO of Haven for Hope Inc. and Dennis J. Campa is the director for the City of San Antonio's Department of Community Initiatives.
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