When we think about the topic of the housing crisis in Marin County and the broader Bay Area, one of the first issues that jumps to many of our minds is homelessness. The unhoused members of our community are often a very visible reminder of how—in my opinion—our social safety net has failed our neighbors and the housing crisis has made their path to shelter and stability much more harrowing. While many stakeholders (the government, non-profits, communities of faith, businesses, and individuals, to name a few) have an important role to play in stepping up to address this crisis, I wanted to shine a light on the important work being done by two non-profits in our community: St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin and Larkin Street Youth Services. I believe the insight shared in the following interviews can help readers learn about the critical services being offered by these nonprofits—and others like them—and perhaps inspire and empower reads to be a part of the solution.

Interview with Christine Paquette, Executive Director, and Meredith Parnell, Chief Program Officer of St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin County

Emily Harrington (“EH”): Please tell our readers about St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin–what does the organization do?

Christine Paquette (“CP”): St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin (“SVdP”) has been in Marin since 1946, helping people experiencing crisis; oftentimes people who are precariously housed or facing eviction, also those who are homeless. We offer three core services:

Homelessness prevention:
Our staff and volunteer team makes 1,200 home visits per year, all throughout Marin. They meet with and help people in crisis situations, for example, with an eviction notice, or to help pay emergency rent, utilities, and other bills. Anything to help them to not lose housing. There are so many people who do not have an emergency fund, and cannot navigate a crisis. If someone just can’t afford their rent, we help connect them to resources. We help them navigate the crisis, to remain housed and reach sustainability.

Services for people experiencing homelessness.
We house people who are both newly homeless and chronically homeless. We have specific programs if someone is newly homeless, or has been on the street for some length of time, battling disability, mental health, substance abuse, etc. We have case managers who provide services to help these people get rehoused. Each year, we help hundreds of people who are experiencing homelessness to secure a path to housing.

Free dining room.
Our free dining room is open 365 days a year. It’s been open since 1981, providing free breakfast and lunch. We serve approximately 175,000 meals per year in Marin County. The dining room is not limited to just those experiencing homelessness; our free meals are available to people of all walks of life who need healthy, nutritious food.

EH: What are some of the current challenges with getting people housed in Marin County?

CP: We have observed two key issues this year, in terms of challenges for getting people housed.

Older adult/senior homelessness.
The number of older residents who are on fixed incomes and are unable to even afford to rent a room in Marin County has skyrocketed. If you were a low-income wage earner over the course of your working years, then your social security payments are low. The average cost to rent a room in Marin County is $1,300 per month. If you are a senior and your Social Security payment is just $1,300, then you are in an impossible situation. You might try to stay here in Marin and live in your car, or St. Vincent’s can help you move to a county far away, like Butte County, where you can have a roof over your head, but you won’t know anyone or have support.

By and large, these vulnerable older adults are women, because women live longer. These people are not strangers; they are the women who have been our school volunteers, served on committees, worked at our libraries, and taken care of their sick spouses, etc. They have worked low-paying jobs and spent their whole lives giving to this community. For these older adults, if they end up moving away to a cheaper county, like Butte, where they can have a roof over their head, they then face social isolation; living in a new place where no one and nothing is familiar to them. Research shows that social isolation is deadly, especially for older adults.

Meredith Parnell (“MP”): Sanctioning encampments.
Our second focus this year is the idea of sanctioned encampments. We are in favor of sanctioned encampments if it is done correctly. Encampments give people stability and the resources they need to be in a safer environment. Our case managers can have access to the folks in the encampments, and help them navigate their way out of homeless. Sanctioned, legal, safe encampments, are a good thing, but they need to be housing-focused. The idea is we connect the individuals living there to resources and help them navigate out of homelessness.

The current obstacle is getting the funding that sanctioned encampments require. But if we all work together; the cities, elected officials, businesses, service providers and nonprofits, it can have a huge positive impact.

EH: How has the Bay Area’s housing crisis—the affordability challenge, the lack of inventory, etc.—impacted homelessness in Marin?

CP: Marin does not have enough housing inventory, and rents are higher than ever with an increasing cost of living. This dramatically impacts the precariously housed and those who are newly homeless. The County is housing many people, but if residents continue to fall into homelessness at this current rate, then we are at a crossroads.

These are people who have lived in Marin for many years, but now, for the first time, people are experiencing homelessness.

Marin does not have enough “starter” apartments or starter homes. Marin was built on starter homes, think of Terra Linda, these little simple houses. It was a starter home environment. However, those homes now cost over $1 million. They are no longer starter homes. If you look at the statistics: people aren’t getting married and having children at the same rates as in previous generations. We need to be building 1-bedroom / 1-bathroom apartments and homes; whether you’re a working professional or an older adult, those are the units we need for our young people who grew up in Marin and our older residents who would like to downsize.

EH: Why is building affordable housing in Marin so difficult to build and how can the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (“BAHFA”) bond measure help?

MP: We have been unable, in Marin, to create a sustainable source of funding for affordable housing. Developers pay “in-lieu” fees which are fees meant to offset every affordable unit the developer would have been required to build; but the in-lieu fees are not enough to actually build new properties in Marin.

The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (“BAHFA”) is a joint powers authority across 9 Bay Area counties. It created this entity—BAFHA—that has the power to float bonds across the 9 Bay Areas counties. Our big hope, is that collectively across the Bay Area, we—the voters—can pass a $10 or $20 billion bond to build more affordable homes and help keep existing homes affordable. The bond would collect $100 per year from homeowners, per million of property value. So, for example, if your house is worth $1.5 million, you would pay $150 per year. Marin County could receive $300- $700 million over 10 years if BAHFA passes.

BAHFA is our opportunity to make a big difference; we could actually build housing. Please read about the BAHFA bond measure, which will be on the November 2024 ballot, here: https://mtc.ca.gov/about-mtc/authorities/bay-area-housing-finance-authority-bahfa

EH: How can readers in Marin County and the greater Bay Area community help?

MP: Members of the community can support the affordable bond measure (BAHFA), talk to people, write supportive letters, be an ambassador. Vote, but know the facts. By listening, reading this article, you are learning some of the facts.

CP: If you are a part of a community group, you can reach out to SVdP [website link here] and someone from our organization can come present to your group. If you are on Nextdoor (the neighborhood website) you can engage in conversations and be a resource for people to get accurate information. This in turn helps our Marin business community, our seniors, and our precariously housed population.

Financial support, through individual donations to organizations like SVdP is tremendously helpful too. Please visit our website: www.vinnies.org/give-help/ways-to-give/

Interview with Sherilyn Adams, Executive Director of Larkin Street Youth Services

Emily Harrington (“EH”) Please tell our readers about Larkin Street Youth Services–what does the organization do?

Sherilyn Adams (“SA”): Larkin Street Youth Services provides an array of services for young people at risk for, or experiencing, homelessness in San Francisco and Alameda. That includes everything from street outreach, to engagement programing, our drop-in center, shelter, and a wide array of housing. Marrying with those services, is our goal of ensuring that young people have access to education, employment, behavior health services, and life skills. Our mission is to provide life-saving and life-changing services that are easily accessible, and help youth successfully transition into adulthood. Our intended impact is for the young people who exit our programs to have safe and stable housing.

We have made significant progress with that goal; we have a 90% success rate with safe and stable housing for the youth who exit our programs. To give some numbers to paint a picture: this year, we are on track to serve 1,800 young people through our programs. 450 of those will be housed with us in some way. That also means, the difference between those numbers (the approximately 1,350 youth who participate in our services but do not end up in housing), are probably unstably housed, or continuing to experience homelessness.

EH: What are some of the unique challenges for youth experiencing homelessness, as opposed to the adult population?

SA: Young people experiencing homelessness are a fairly invisible population. Developmentally where they are at; they are trying to fit in with their housed peers. They see the stigma that older people experiencing homeless face. As one young person one said, “I didn’t tell anyone I was homeless, until I was housed.” Over the years, we’ve made progress on increasing the visibility of youth homelessness, but it is still a challenge.

Youth homelessness is caused by a variety of things: Family conflict, parental death, parental substance use, lack of basic safety net services, poverty, and other ways that families did not have sufficient resources. COVID was another challenge that uniquely affected youth: 2 million children did not return to school after COVID, particularly teens who were 16+ years old. Homelessness correlates very strongly with not having a GED. These are things that we are trying to work on: providing access to stable housing and intensive education.

Another data point to help paint the picture: San Francisco’s Point-in-Time Count (“PIT” Count), which is a survey conducted every 2 years, in which information is gathered about individuals currently sleeping on the streets, in cars, or in other unsheltered places, found that 50% of the folks who identified in the PIT Count as “homeless” had their first experience with homelessness under the age of 25. This underscores that a big part of addressing adult homelessness and chronic homelessness, is interventions and resources directed toward youth homelessness.

EH: What do you think are the key services needed for young people as opposed to the adult homeless population?

SA: Intensive education and employment services. These youth have experienced a lot of trauma, so they need wellness and behavioral health services too, just as the adults do. With adults, you are focusing on retraining for employment. Adults probably had a job and lived in a house at one point. For young people, they have often never had a job and never had their own place; many of them have never had a checking account, they haven’t finished their education, and they don’t know how to apply for college. These are the services that we focus on: access to intensive education, employment training, financial coaching, behavioral health and wellness. We deliver those services in a way that is specific to the needs of young people; making sure they can learn to be self-sufficient and live healthy, successfully lives.

EH: How has the Bay Area’s housing crisis impacted youth homelessness?

SA: When we think about the housing crisis, we often think about adults and families, but young people are impacted too: they are trying to get their first apartment, trying to live-and stay—in their communities. The affordability issues have a huge impact: if you don’t have a degree, an apprenticeship, or a job, the ability to find and sustain housing is nearly impossible.

The housing affordability crisis disproportionately impacts lower income people. Building new affordable housing is definitely part of the solution, but we can’t build new housing fast enough to solve this issue. We can’t just build our way out of this. So we need to have other solutions too. That means that things like subsidies; we offer short term (2 or 3 years) of subsidies through some of our programs. That allows the youth to get their own place and start building their education and employment path. Without stable housing, working on education and employment is a nearly impossible task.

EH: What are some current priorities that Larkin Street is focusing on? What are some projects already in motion that you are optimistic about?

SA: Raising visibility about youth homeless is one our key objectives. But it's getting more and more difficult to raise visibility, because what people see around them is the chronically homeless, older adult population of unhoused people. Folks feel a lot of frustration when they see people living outside. Some people want them living inside because they think it’s not right, it’s a humanitarian crisis. Other folks just don’t want to see homelessness or they don’t want it in their neighborhood.

Our projects focus on raising visibility for the homeless youth population; trying to educate folks about the positive interventions that can happen when a young person receives supportive services earlier on, before they become part of the chronically homeless, older adult population.

EH: What are some projects that have not been put into motion yet, that you believe would help?

SA: We would like to see continued, new, sustained investment in the creation of housing for youth, whether that’s shelters, transitional housing, for supportive housing. We would like to see more investment from the State, whether that’s Project Home Key, or other preventions, and we would like to see funds set aside specifically for youth. To make sure that in counties and communities, there is housing specific to young people

There is a housing bond that we’re trying to push, SB 1079, which will combat homelessness and housing instability for vulnerable youth, including foster youth. Proposition 1 is also something that we are fighting for; it is another bond measure devoted mental health care and drug or alcohol treatment for people experiencing homelessness.

Essentially, we would like to see more resources invested at the local and state level to specifically support young people.

EH: How can readers in Marin County and the greater Bay Area community help?

SA: If there is an opportunity for housing to be created in your community for youth, support it, and advocate for it. Support programs and initiatives for young people experiencing homelessness. For example, we have a pilot program that provides direct cash transfers to young people who participate in this pilot. It an evidence evidence-based model, grounded on research that demonstrates that when you give young people money, they can reduce or eliminate their homelessness. Support programs that help young folks stay in school and get employed. Be an advocate, an ambassador for these programs.

Individual donations to organizations like Larkin Street Youth Services allow us to continue the important work that we discussed today.