Gilroy
– This year’s early start to the winter is a stark reminder that
not everyone in Gilroy will spend the winter warm, dry and fed.
Three Gilroy-based organizations are teaming up to collect items
for winter survival kits to give to the homeless, especially those
who literally sleep on the streets.
Items needed include water repellent jackets, duffel bags,
sleeping bags and sleeping bag mats, knit caps, gloves, flashlights
and small Bibles.
Gilroy – This year’s early start to the winter is a stark reminder that not everyone in Gilroy will spend the winter warm, dry and fed.
Three Gilroy-based organizations are teaming up to collect items for winter survival kits to give to the homeless, especially those who literally sleep on the streets.
Items needed include water repellent jackets, duffel bags, sleeping bags and sleeping bag mats, knit caps, gloves, flashlights and small Bibles.
The drive is being organized by emergency services provider St. Joseph’s Family Center, business marketing and design company Articulate Solutions and collections and customer service company the Rickenbacker Group.
Articulate Solutions owner Katherine Filice, who also is a former St. Joseph’s Family Center board member and former Rickenbacker marketing consultant, is coordinating the project.
Last winter, she said, she and her coworkers would look outside the window from their office on Fifth Street and see homeless men braving the cold, wet weather with little more than drenched sleeping bags and tattered clothes.
That was enough to inspire her to do something.
“There is no more challenging time for the homeless community than the chilly, wet winter months,” she said. “While providing these individuals with the essentials they need to survive the winter is not a lasting cure for homelessness, it affords them relative comfort and helps them maintain dignity as they interact in the community.”
David Cox, executive director of St. Joseph’s, said the center was eager to participate in the drive, and talking with the homeless has helped identify which items are especially needed during the winter.
“When Katherine approached us with her interest, we of course jumped on it,” he said. “We’ve done programs similar to this but not nearly to this scale. We’re focusing on collecting some items that we hope address some of those urgent needs.”
Filice said the goal is to collect 80 survival kits by Nov. 12. Local businesses and the public can donate new or slightly used items and deliver them to the Rickenbacker Group office, 7568 Monterey St., from 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday.
Monetary donations also are accepted. Tax-deductible donation checks can be made to St. Joseph’s Family Center.
While local efforts are targeting homelessness on an immediate level, Santa Clara County is in the early stages of creating a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness.
In a unanimous vote, the county’s board of supervisors recently approved the formation of a task force to develop the 10-year strategy, which will accomplish a number of things including assessing how many people in the county are chronically homeless and devising plans to prevent homelessness and to provide homeless people with access to jobs and supportive services.
Generally, the chronically homeless are people who do not live in shelters or accept counseling. According to Karen Gruneisen, a consultant with HomeBase, a nonprofit law firm that works to end homelessness in communities, the chronically homeless make up only 10 percent of the homeless population nationwide. But they use about 50 percent of the resources allocated to alleviate homelessness, she said, because they don’t accept help and therefore end up more often in emergency rooms, jails and substance abuse and mental health facilities.
The task force will be made up of more than 40 people, said Marjorie Matthews, director of the county’s office of affordable housing. It will include two members of the county board of supervisors, elected officials from each of the county’s 15 cities and towns, representatives from several community organizations, and three people who are either homeless or have been homeless.
Marilyn Roaf, the city’s housing and community development grants coordinator, will serve on the task force on Gilroy’s behalf. Taking a collaborative approach to chronic homelessness is a good way to tackle the problem, she said.
“One of the things we’ll be able to do is be more involved with the agencies that serve people who are homeless,” she said.
Additionally, she said, the census measuring chronic homelessness locally will be key to understanding exactly what’s needed and where.
“We would like to get some picture of the need here in Gilroy, so we could know that the programs and funds we have are going in the right direction,” she said.
The final draft of the 10-year plan will be presented to the county’s board of supervisors in April.
The task force is part of a national effort launched last year by the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness, which announced this year it would distribute $22 million in grants to communities across the country that have created 10-year plans to end homelessness.
Contra Costa County recently received $3.4 million from the federal grant after it developed a 10-year strategy for homelessness. The city of San Francisco received $4.6 million in grants earlier this month, largely because in June it established its own 10-year plan.
“There’s no guarantee that we’ll get that grant, but we know we wouldn’t have a chance for it if we didn’t have the 10-year plan,” Matthews said. “But beyond the federal grant, our goal really is to end homelessness. Getting an accurate count of how many homeless there are in Santa Clara County will help us take the steps to really address the problem.”
The Gilroy Armory Winter Shelter, in the California National Guard Building at 8490 Wren Ave., will open Nov. 29.
The Sobrato Family Transitional Center, a partner project between the Emergency Housing Consortium and South County Housing, is currently being built at 9345 Monterey Road, between Las Animas and Cohansey avenues.
When the center is complete in the next couple of years, it will replace the current armory’s services. The Sobrato facility will include 60 two- to three-bedroom transitional and permanent apartments and an adjacent 140-bed emergency shelter.
Construction on the second phase of the project, the apartments, will begin by the end of the year, said EHC development manager Hilary Barroga.
All 13 for-sale market-rate homes constructed during the project’s first phase earlier this year have been sold.
The center will provide support services including drug and alcohol rehabilitation, children’s services and parenting programs. One of the goals will be helping the homeless in the southern part of the county.
When full-time programs at the new Sobrato facility are underway, the National Guard building will be used year-round for National Guard training.
