Showering the Homeless with Jobs
San Francisco has a major epidemic: poverty. When technology companies received tax breaks, as incentives to relocate from Silicon Valley to San Francisco in order to enhance the area, the city took an unfortunate tumble. Instead of these tech companies spending daily cash on local businesses to thrive their environment, they made their offices self sufficient i.e. laundry delivery contracts, on-site cafes, gyms, child care etc. With the influx of extortionately paid tech staff, landlords saw the chance to increase their rent values and as a result, around 50% of current tenants were evicted, illegally. With apartments and homes now in abundance, rent prices rocketed and diversity was hit hard. The colorful and unique people that made up San Francisco were driven out the city and the gentrified replaced them. Over the past eight years, the homeless numbers rose yet during the past four years, it's rocketed.
In a tiny 7x7 mile radius city, over 9,000 homeless is a catastrophic statistic yet the city and tech corporations are throwing money that's obviously going down the drain i.e. they're spending it on 'safe needles' since they don't want the homeless in the hospitals, so prefer to have them shooting up with 'better needles' on the street i.e. less of a hospital expense. They’ve also poured cash into food for the homeless. This should be a positive attribute yet it’s resulted in San Francisco turning into a Disneyland i.e. if you’re homeless, move to San Francisco for the best lifestyle. The situation is abysmal with human feces and needles all over the streets - yet with SF CARES long standing tradition of ground breaking changes, we know that our 'showering the homeless with jobs' will make a huge dent in the poverty statistics...
How does 'showering the homeless' work?
Saint Paulus Church is one of SF CARES partners. Saint Paulus will be relocating back to their 999 Eddy Street church site later this year and the on-site facilities include laundry and shower suites. The aim is that the homeless hand over their resume when they
come to Saint Paulus for a shower. While they're showering, SF CARES will match their resume to an open job position. They come out the shower, wear
donated office attire clothes and head to their new job. The employer will set
them on a 30 or 60 day trial and pay for their hotel, to provide immediate stability.
During that time, we'll secure affordable housing and after the 30 or 60 days
is up, the individual will now have a job and roof over their head. The more we
reduce the number of homeless with this initiative, the more we publicize it
and the more our blueprint formula goes nationwide so others can replicate the
process.
Instead of having a shower and being sent back onto the streets, our
showers will offer a new opportunity - preparing the displaced to get ready for
the first day of work. It's empowering, gives hope and the excitement of
getting back into the employment arena. We know 50% of the homeless have the
quick ability & credentials to get back into employment and that's our
focus. One church reducing poverty levels by half is a ground breaking feat,
yet completely doable.
Since we started this program, the donations have begun to dribble in. Notably, not from any tech company we've approached. We'll have volunteers in abundance once the program starts, already secured a govt employment partner, in talks with a govt housing partner and confirmed a flood of clothes and furnishings (for new affordable homes). We're well on our way with this program.
You can read more about this in our extended 'fundraiser introduction' and 'about us' page on Google Drive.
You can read more about this in our extended 'fundraiser introduction' and 'about us' page on Google Drive.
Will you support us and DONATE to our Showering the Homeless project? We hope you do.
One shower, resume, job and home at a time...
