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Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park is a shopping and dining destination. It’s also been an office for Joe, a formerly unsheltered IT professional. Like many Silicon Valley tech workers, Joe’s office is not traditional: he works from an outdoor desk located in front of the downtown Bank of America. And until very recently, he had been homeless for more than 20 years.
Joe, 67, has worked for several local tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. But a handful of circumstances, including depression and garnished wages related to child support, left Joe without adequate funds to secure housing. For many years he called Stanford University his home, using resources most frequently within the Stanford Law School. For the last several years, he’s been working and sleeping in Menlo Park.
LifeMoves, headquartered in Menlo Park, is the largest provider of homeless shelter and services in Silicon Valley. Last year, more than 7,000 homeless children and adults received support through the organization’s 26 shelters and programs. Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) members are some of the lesser known LifeMoves staff, but they are on the frontlines of homelessness in San Mateo County. Members of this team meet clients on the streets, in their cars, and in encampments, developing a rapport with these vulnerable individuals and collaborating with community stakeholders to help offer a path to self sufficiency and secure permanent housing.
LifeMoves is one of the beneficiaries of The Almanac’s Holiday Fund. Because The Almanac and its partner the Silicon Valley Community Foundation cover all the administrative costs, every dollar raised goes directly to this year’s 10 nonprofit organizations. Donations to the Holiday Fund can be made at almanacnews.com/holiday_fund.
HOT Case Manager Christine Collaco met Joe after responding to a welfare request from a community partner in February. She quickly conducted an assessment and gauged his interest in entering a LifeMoves site, but Joe was reluctant after becoming ill after a stay at an inclement weather shelter. Collaco responded to Joe’s concern and began working to get Joe his Social Security benefits and food stamps, tasks that proved incredibly arduous.
After several years of homelessness, Joe lost his identification, something common among unhoused individuals. In order to secure replacement identification, a birth certificate is needed, something else Joe didn’t possess. The process became more complicated and time-intensive due to reduced office hours related to COVID-19. Joe and his case manager also had to navigate the murky waters of out-of-state agencies. Joe, who grew up in New Jersey, had a relationship defined as a common law marriage in New York after he and his partner had a child. One of Collaco’s next tasks is to work with social services agencies in New York to see if some of Joe’s debt can be forgiven.
Collaco said Joe was pessimistic about her offers of help when they met. But his opinion changed after he saw her perseverance. “Most people say they’ll do something and don’t. She delivers,” he said of Collaco.
COVID-19 challenges have made this already daunting work even more difficult. Something as simple as providing transportation to appointments has had to be modified to ensure safety for staff and clients – and it offers another chance for clients to slip through the cracks.
In the last fiscal year, HOT members recorded outreach engagements with more than 560 San Mateo County households. Nearly half of these households received intense supportive services. In the nine months Collaco has worked with Joe, she has logged more than 40 appointments to find him his home.
She sought all available resources and her efforts paid off. Joe moved into his Redwood City apartment the week before Thanksgiving. And what he’s looking forward to the most are the simple things. “Peace, quiet and being able to sleep as long as I want, but most importantly, time,” Joe said.
With an established home, Joe will have the gift of time to pursue educational goals that were previously unattainable. He is enjoying preparing his own meals, but said the food at La Stanza Cucina Italiana in Menlo Park is “irreplaceable.”
LifeMoves is headquartered at 181 Constitution Drive in Menlo Park. Contact LifeMoves at lifemoves.org or 650-685-5880.
Nacole Barth-Ellis is a senior grant writer at LifeMoves.
Nacole Barth-Ellis is a senior grant writer at LifeMoves.
Nacole Barth-Ellis is a senior grant writer at LifeMoves.
