GILROY
– Part of an $8.7-million grant from the federal government
awarded to Santa Clara County will go to two organizations serving
homeless families and individuals in Gilroy and one in San
Martin.
GILROY – Part of an $8.7-million grant from the federal government awarded to Santa Clara County will go to two organizations serving homeless families and individuals in Gilroy and one in San Martin.
Homelessness is recognized as a growing problem even in parts of the country generally considered affluent. To address that need, the government awarded the grant last week to the county’s Collaborative on Affordable Housing and Homeless Issues, a group of more than 100 organizations serving the homeless.
Community Solutions will receive $224,553 for its Transitional Housing for Homeless Teen Parents and their Children. The Ochoa Winter Shelter run by Housing Authority of Santa Clara County will receive $48,300. Another $93,866 will go to the Boccardo Family Living Center in San Martin, run by the Emergency Housing Consortium. The EHC will also receive $56,275 for supplemental after-shelter services countywide.
The Housing and Urban Development grant is the second largest received by the county collaborative since it began in 1991, according to Margaret Gregg, Santa Clara County’s coordinator for homeless concerns. The grant will fund a total of 27 projects in the county this spring.
“Reports show that the face of homelessness is changing,” said District-1 Supervisor Don Gage, chair of the Board of Supervisors’ committee on housing, land use and transportation. “While there will be some differences in factors in large cities and more suburban and rural areas, contributing factors for many individuals and families are low wages and the lack of affordable housing.”
Santa Clara County has more than 3,000 shelter beds filling up year-round. Another 350 beds are open during the colder winter months.
“A place to call home is one of the things that many of us take for granted,” Gage said. “Many others don’t have this basic necessity. Fortunately, we will be able to start the new year offering hope to some of these families.”
The $224,553 grant for Community Solutions will help support the organization’s housing services for young, pregnant mothers. Two homes in Gilroy house a handful of homeless mothers-to-be.
“What we do is provide transitional housing … and hook them up with other services,” said Erin O’Brien, chief executive officer.
The other services include assistance in finding permanent housing and employment and parenting classes.
“All of the life skills that are needed in families who are able to support themselves for a longer period of time,” O’Brien said. “How to create the kind of family that they want to create.”
The grant will be used to provide ongoing support for the transitional housing and services, O’Brien said, but will also allow Community Solutions to evaluate its role in the county’s collaborative.
“We kind of consistently try to look at our programs to see how we can improve them,” she said. “We want to make sure we’re fulfilling a need.”
The EHC, which is the number one recipient of HUD dollars in the county, received a $93,866 grant for the Boccardo Family Living Center in San Martin.
“What it does is it provides supportive services and actually helps pay for housing 26 families in emergency and transitional housing for homeless families in South County,” said Poncho Guevara, EHC’s director of housing and government affairs.
Eight of the center’s units provide emergency shelter, while the rest provide two-year transitional housing for families. The center provides case management services and support programs to help the families find permanent housing.
EHC also received $56,275 to maintain that after-shelter support throughout the county.
“This is where we make sure that folks that come out of the emergency shelter and transitional housing … don’t cycle back into homelessness,” Guevara said.
The San Martin center is modeled after EHC’s James F. Boccardo Regional Reception Center in San Jose.
EHC will open another emergency shelter, or reception center, modeled after Boccardo in the planned Sobrato Family Transitional Center at 9345 Monterey Road in Gilroy. The Reception Center will provide 140 beds year round in its multipurpose center, with 75 emergency shelter beds and 65 transitional beds for single adults.
EHC currently runs the cold weather shelter out of the Army National Guard armory at 8490 Wren Ave., providing meals and sleeping mats for about 130 people each night. EHC plans to begin construction on the reception center in 2005.
While there is no funding for EHC’s Gilroy project in the grant, Guevara said the EHC will likely pursue one for the reception center in the future. The grants are currently being awarded to permanent support of housing rather than transitional or emergency housing, which could make it difficult, Guevara said.
During the past year, EHC has raised about half the $6.5 million needed to purchase the land and complete the project, Guevara said.
During the next six months, EHC plans to engage in fundraising, including holding some community events.
“Projects like these are ones that require a deep public subsidy,” Guevara said.
“The funding invested on the part of the county is going to help facilitate major funding to construct the project and make sure that it has a wonderful, quality facility for the Gilroy community to be proud of,” Guevara said.
The Sobrato Family Transitional Center will include Sobrato Apartments, a South County Housing project that will provide 60 units of transitional family housing. The apartments are scheduled to be built next year.
Representatives of the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County, which runs the Ochoa Winter Shelter at the Ochoa migrant camp, could not be reached for comment before deadline.
