Amid its widespread homelessness and vagrancy crisis, California is starting to take notice of the impact made by Haven for Hope in San Antonio.
Some local officials in California said they could learn from the strategy employed by the homeless services nonprofit.
“Haven for Hope has not solved homelessness in San Antonio. But they have certainly done a much better job, I think, than most places in California,” said Sacramento County Supervisor Rich Desmond, CalMatters reported.
Nola Boyer, a board member of the homeless advocacy nonprofit Hope for Sacramento, described Haven for Hope as a “fabulous, fabulous program” after visiting the facility. She said she hopes to reproduce the model in the city.
“[W]e just see it as such a translatable project here in California,” she said, per CalMatters.
Haven for Hope serves as a “one-stop-shop” for homeless services in San Antonio, offering things like counseling, addiction rehabilitation, and job training in conjunction with providing housing at its “Transformational Campus.”
Haven for Hope offers nearly all of its services on a single 22-acre campus that serves nearly 85% of the homeless population in San Antonio. The approach has been credited with a 77% reduction in homelessness and vagrancy in the city.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, California cities have been suffering from critical levels of homelessness and vagrancy. For its part, San Francisco has experienced the worst post-pandemic recovery of any major U.S. city, with the prevalence of crime and homelessness cited as a major factor. At the same time, the mayors of Los Angeles and Long Beach have declared states of emergency over their levels of homelessness and vagrancy.
California officials are not the only ones who have taken notice of Haven for Hope.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson recently visited Haven for Hope to learn more about their approach to mitigating homelessness and vagrancy.
Whether such an approach will be adopted in Dallas remains to be seen, but the “one-stop-shop” model has polled favorably among Dallas voters. Meanwhile, 75% of residents say homelessness continues to be a “major” problem throughout the city.
