Larkin Street Youth Services, which has provided San Francisco’s homeless youth with support services since 1984, celebrated the grand opening of its new facility at 134 Golden Gate Avenue today.
In January, the nonprofit began consolidating a number of its programs, including the youth drop-in center; Larkin Street Academy, which offers GED classes and tutoring, employment skills training, internship opportunities and an arts program; health clinic and administrative offices, from facilities spread across Sutter Street to the newly renovated location.
An examination room in the new facility's health clinic, dedicated to long-time Department of Public Health employee Michael Baxter, who worked closely with Larkin Street since the '80s and died earlier this year.
The future home of Larkin Street's recording studio booth.
More than 200 partners and friends of the nonprofit gathered in the new first-floor drop-in center for speeches from city officials, service partners and donors. In her opening remarks for the ceremony, Laura Powell, board chair of Larkin Street Youth Services, recognized technology companies — including Google, ZenDesk and Twitter — as well as private donors that contributed funds and volunteer hours to the renovation of the building.
Rebecca Prozan, manager of public policy, community and government affairs at Google said that the technology giant is a “key sponsor” for the Larkin Street Academy because of the nonprofit’s shared commitment to innovation. “Like Google, Larkin Street does not accept the status quo,” she said.
The new art space and computers stocked with Adobe Photoshop and graphics software.
Bevan Dufty, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement; District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim; and Maria Su, executive director of the city’s Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families (DCYF), all noted that Larkin Street’s new location is adding to positive changes they’ve been seeing on the 100 block of Golden Gate and in the Tenderloin.
Dufty stated that the block “has so much love in it,” pointing to last month’s grand opening of the 90-unit senior housing apartment complex and new Tech Lab across the street at St. Anthony’s, as well as St. Boniface Catholic Church allowing homeless neighbors to sleep in their pews from 6am to 3pm.
Following the ceremony, Su shared with Hoodline how important Larkin Street is to DCYF’s work building communities where “neighbors help neighbors.” Su, who spent 10 years working at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center at Eddy and Larkin, said she takes a neighborhood approach to allocating DCYF's funds to local organizations. The department partners with school programs, community- and faith-based after school programs, nonprofit organizations and city departments to help “local families thrive and succeed in their neighborhoods.”
Larkin Street — with academics, workforce training, arts enrichment and physical and behavioral health services — is one of the few programs in the city that offers the community a multi-service center, which is extremely important, she said.
