Going For The Gold-Building on Faith
September 28, 2006 at the Silver Dragon, Chinatown, Downtown Oakland.
Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County and the Contra Costa Winter Nights Program
The Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County (I4C’s) is an autonomous local organization solely governed by its own Executive Committee, elected by the membership at the Council’s annual meeting. The Interfaith Council, as the Council of Churches, was originally organized for the primary purpose of providing chaplaincy ministries in various county institutions on behalf of local congregations.
The Council became interfaith in 1997, widening its membership to include congregations and faith organizations which represent the growing pluralistic population of Contra Costa County. There are more than 95 congregations and organizations holding membership and affiliation from a wide range of Christian and other faith traditions, including Jewish, Buddhist, Baha'i, Unitarian, Islamic, Sikh, Unity and Religious Science.
Program areas have expanded to include a revolving winter shelter with the mission to protect homeless families and seniors from winter weather by providing shelter in a clean, safe, and warm environment. The Contra Costa Winter Nights Program provides a revolving, temporary nighttime shelter from mid –October to early May, for families with children and elders capable of self-care who are experiencing homelessness in Contra Costa County.
Contra Costa Winer Nights Program
MISSION: To protect homeless families and seniors from winter weather by providing shelter in a clean, safe, and warm environment.
OBJECTIVE: To organize, fund, and operate a program under the auspices of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County that will provide temporary nighttime shelter from mid –October 2006 to the end of April, 2007 for families with children and elders capable of self care who are experiencing homelessness in Contra Costa County.
The Winter Nights Program began operation in November, 2004, and concluded its second successful year on May 2, 2006.
The Winter Nights Program has built upon the experience gained by faith communities in the past in another effort to house those experiencing homelessness. Preceded by the Family Employment Resources Service Together Emergency Shelter Program (FERST), many of the same congregations came together to implement the Winter Nights Program.
During 1998, the FERST Center provided various supportive services to families in crisis. In addition, from 1999-2001, the program brought together local faith communities and private and public community organizations to provide safe shelter for up to 30 guests each night. The program rotated locations, housing the clients in a different congregational facility each week. The program was discontinued because available funding was inadequate to cover expenses and the weekly rotating site structure proved too complex to manage. Congregations also frequently encountered difficulty freeing space already committed to other activities.
Recently, as the waiting list for shelter beds grew longer, members of the faith community joined with homeless service providers to form the Homeless Summit, under the sponsorship of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, to raise funds and once again develop a program to address the issue of homelessness in our community.
Initially, the program funded and supplied vouchers to homeless families for motel occupancy. That strategy met a critical need, but was only able to provide shelter to a limited number of families for a maximum of two nights per family. Meanwhile extensive efforts continued to identify a facility and design a single site shelter program so that assistance could be extended to a greater number of those in dire need during the cold winter nights. This continues to be a vision for the future.
Since we have been unable, to date, to realize the vision described above, we are building on earlier experiences to craft an effective and workable rotating site program to address unmet needs of our homeless families and seniors during the Winter of 2006- 2007.
Winter Nights Shelter provided last year:
- a warm, safe place to sleep for 111 family members--majority children-- from mid-October, 2005, through May 1, 2006
- transportation to school each day for the children daytime “Oasis” (service center) for the parents to job search, access services, find low-income housing, shower, wash clothes, etc.
- bus and BART tickets for parents to get to work
- tutoring and mentoring by volunteers at 26 host congregations
- opportunities for appearing in the Homeless Court to expunge records
- program monitoring and quality assurance
- professional staff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- health care, screening, inoculations through Healthcare for the Homeless
- a website with information: www.cccwinternights.org
- a budget of $117,000: 1/3 from foundations; 2/3 from individuals and faith congregations in Contra Costa County
- stable housing for 80% of families that stayed in shelter for two weeks or longer
Our goals this year will be to meet, and hopefully surpass, last year’s accomplishments.