Newswise — San Francisco, CA June 10, 2011 – “Every day we see more and more homeless people coming to us for help. Many are newly homeless and never imagined they’d find themselves in this situation. They are without a job and without food. We try to make sure they are never without hope.” Gwendolyn Westbrook, Executive Director of the United Council of Human Services, which provides a wide array of services to the homeless and poor, says these are truly hard times for the people of the Bayview-Hunters Point community. “The country is having a hard time but it seems to be three times as hard for poor and minority communities, with so many out of work and just plain out of luck.” Those feeling are born out by the latest survey of homelessness in San Francisco. The count showed that homelessness in Bayview-Hunters Point rose a staggering 159 percent, from 444 in 2009 to 1,151 in 2011. That’s more than any other neighborhood in San Francisco. Westbrook and other individuals and organizations from the community will be teaming up with Project Homeless Connect to try and help change that. Project Homeless Connect (PHC) will be moving from its usual home at Civic Center and taking its one-stop service model to the Bayview on June 10th. “When you are struggling just to survive it’s hard to get from the Bayview to downtown, particularly for families,” says Kara Zordel, Director of Project Homeless Connect. “So we wanted to bring our services to the people of the community, to make it as easy as possible for them to get the help they need to change their lives for the better.”Last year more than 900 people turned out for the PHC event in the Bayview. This year they expect even more people to come looking to access the wide array of services offered. Those include medical exams and HIV testing, mental health and substance abuse, employment, groceries, banking services, phone calls, voicemail accounts, veterinary services, dental, domestic violence services, Homeward Bound and the Healthy SF programs.Project Homeless Connect will be held on Friday, June 10th, from 10am to 3pm at 2401 Keith Street, between Armstrong and Carroll in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. As always PHC relies on volunteers to help deliver many of the services and care for the clients. The sponsor of this event, Deloitte, is providing not just financial support but is also bringing along a team of volunteers to help with the work.
Gwendolyn Westbrook says this is a chance for the community to come out and help those most in need. “Just by volunteering, lending a helping hand, you can make a difference in someone’s life,” she says. Westbrook says everyone at PHC is going to try and do more than just take care of bodily needs. “We are going to have music throughout the day, gospel music and upbeat tunes, something to raise the spirit and feed the soul. We want people to leave here feeling that people care, feeling they have hope.” Since the program began, more than 21,000 volunteers have provided services to more than 32,000 homeless and poor San Franciscans through Project Homeless Connect. It is estimated that roughly 6,000-12,000 people are homeless on any given night in San Francisco.For more information contact Kevin McCormack or go to www.projecthomelessconnect.com About Project Homeless ConnectProject Homeless Connect makes a real difference in the lives of the City’s homeless by bringing together almost 250 non-profit agencies, private businesses and volunteers to assist San Franciscans in need. Since the program’s inception in October 2004 as a joint effort of San Francisco’s health care, housing and human service systems, Project Homeless Connect has been supported by tens of thousands of volunteers, individuals and companies giving their time, cash, clothing, food and essential services. To date, this program has provided services to thousands of the City’s most economically disadvantaged men, women and children with basic human needs and housing. Project Homeless Connect is a key component of Mayor Newsom’s 10-year plan to abolish homelessness in San Francisco. This unprecedented approach to helping the homeless has been adopted as a national model in more than 200 jurisdictions in the U.S and has also been implemented in Canada and Australia.
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