Volunteers of America
helping the homeless find their way back
Jan. 4, 2011 — It’s a group of people large enough to fill a
high-rise office building or a college basketball stadium right
here in Sacramento.
Problem is, you won’t find them on the job or cheering on their
favorite team; they’re too busy worrying about staying warm,
finding food or just plain staying safe.
They are the homeless in Sacramento and recent county estimates
suggest they are nearly 3,000 strong. No longer are they the
nameless few. In today’s economy, many homeless are families –
people many of us might have known as co-workers, parents and
children who regularly attended school and played soccer on
Saturdays.
Thankfully, Volunteers of
American Greater Sacramento and Northern Nevada provides an
important safety net for thousands of these people each day,
providing some 40 different programs that offer everything from
job assistance and transitional housing for families to a warm
bed and a meal for the night for a tired and hungry
individual.
“We’ve seen a big shift in the people who are coming to us for
help,” says Christie Holderegger, VOA Sacramento’s Vice President
and Chief Development Officer. “We’re seeing a lot of families
where both parents have lost their jobs, run through their
savings and have no other options. The good news is that we‘ve
been able to help hundreds of people like that in the last year
alone.”
How?
The Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing program for starters.
Initiated in October 2009 in collaboration with the Salvation
Army and Lutheran Social Services, with support from Sacramento
Region Community Foundation, VOA stabilizes at-risk families by
paying their rent for few months and providing case management so
they can gain employment find appropriate housing and stay off
the street.
“We have a very high success rate and we’re finding it’s much
more cost effective to prevent families from becoming homeless in
the first place with programs like these,” Holderegger says.
“There are some incredible success stories.
Like one family from Oroville who was a picture of middle-class
success — a four-bedroom home, go-carts for their five kids and
a late-model Ford Expedition. That is, until both the husband and
wife lost their jobs.
“They wound up living in their car because they had no place else
to go,” Holderegger says. “I remember the mother telling me she’d
look at her young children in the back seat of their car and
wonder if her kids were dreaming of a nice, warm bed and a place
to call home.”
Fortunately, with help from VOA, the family averted further
disaster, found an apartment and within a few months, both
parents were able to find jobs.
But the HPRP program is only one of the many efforts led by VOA
in Sacramento. This non-profit, faith-based organization provides
emergency shelter, transitional housing an permanent supportive
housing to some 1,500 people every night, in addition to housing
young-adult foster children needing help in learning to become
independent, as well as a housing program for abused and
neglected senior citizens.
Though VOA gets some basic government funding, Holderegger says
the need far outstretches these dollars and notes that her
organization relies on donations from the private sector, such as
those from the United Way.
“The United Way has been critical for us,” she says. “Much of the
funding we get from other sources must be spent on a specific
program or need and United Way’s funding is unrestricted. That
helps us fill in the gaps. For example, the Sacramento Senior
Safe House gets no government funding at all, so we have to raise
those dollars from private sources. The United Way is a huge part
of our success.”
Written by Jim Caster who serves on the Marketing
&Communications Committee for United Way California Capital
Region.