Here's some holiday good news: Hamilton Family Center, the emergency shelter for families that's been serving the Haight out of the big yellow church at Waller & Belvedere since 1985, has significantly reduced wait times for families in need of housing in the past year.
It's making progress through a variety of partnerships with tech companies, as well as the city's Home for the Holidays program, a part of Mayor Lee's new homelessness initiative which will serve 50 families by the end of the year, and 120 families by June of 2016. Eighty-five of those 120 will be housed through Hamilton Family Services, which includes the Family Emergency Center at 260 Golden Gate Ave. and the Transitional Housing Center at 1631 Hayes St.
A $1 million grant from Google has allowed HFC to partner with the San Francisco Unified School District to reduce the amount of time families are homeless by about eight months, and helped them shrink their wait list by about 25 percent. "The reduction in the wait times is because the school district is able to refer families to us earlier in their crisis and because we are able to partner with school social workers to better assist the families," HFC Executive Director Jeff Kositsky told us via email.
Volunteers from Salesforce wrapping gifts at the Waller Street center, via HFC/Facebook
Twitter is another big tech company partnering with HFC: it recently donated $75,000 to grow and support HFC's Digital Learning Center at its shelter in the Tenderloin, providing a critical service—access to tech literacy—to homeless youth. (Twitter's donations to HFC in 2015 total over $125,000.)
Hamilton Family Center has also stepped up its efforts for the holidays. It's serving 25 percent more families this year over last, and the goal is to see that every child and adult in over 250 families will receive a meaningful gift this season. To this end, the Center has garnered an enormous list of partners who'll be volunteering at their centers to assist with gift wrapping and parties. It lists Salesforce, Wells Fargo, Eleven Inc, LaunchSquad, Bare Escentuals, Bloomingdale’s, Morgan Stanley, and Salient among its partners, and employees from those companies will be on hand at their Waller Street location wrapping gifts over the next few weeks.
You can help, too! "Thanks to hundreds of generous donors we have actually been able to successfully sponsor the holidays for 250 families—about 800 total people! Our biggest need now is wrapping supplies to wrap all those gifts next week," HFC's Senior Development Associate Nicolle Gameiro told us via email. Additionally, we are always in need of basic need items for families at our shelter that often have few belongings with them (diapers, new underwear for kids, toiletry kits, etc.)."
Check out HFC's wishlist on GOODler, where you help out by purchasing wrapping paper, boxes, and bags. And, of course, they're always looking for the basics: time and money (you can donate here).
