| On June 8, 2004, following a three-year $6.1
million capital campaign, Shelter Network celebrated
the grand opening of the newly reconstructed First Step for Families program
in San Mateo! This critical project was made possible by the generous
support of foundation grants, public funding, and gifts from companies,
community groups, and individual donors.
Read below for more about why we needed to rebuild, and what the new
facility will offer!
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Each year an estimated
6,000 children and parents on the San Francisco Peninsula become
homeless. As the primary provider of housing and services for the
Peninsula's homeless population, Shelter Network could previously
house 94 families each night through our five family programs. Unfortunately,
on any given night there were 40-50 homeless families that were
turned away for lack of space. |
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| To address this
critical community problem, Shelter Network began looking for ways
to give more homeless families safe shelter. We realized that our
First Step for Families facility was only using 10% of the square
footage allowed by city zoning laws and was not ideally designed
to meet the needs of homeless families. We decided to completely
reconstruct the First Step for Families facility, so that we can
serve more families and provide better services. |
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The new state-of-the-art
facility replaces the previous buildings with two new three-story
buildings. The back building contains 24 studio apartments of short-term
shelter (where families can stay up to 60 days), and the second
building has 15 one-bedroom apartments of mid-term transitional
housing (where families can stay up to 6 months), making First Step
the only family transitional housing program in the Central County
area. |
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| Greatly improved program spaces include a
large conference room for parent workshops and a tutoring center with
internet connected computers. One of the most exciting parts of the facility
is the free, licensed Head Start child care center for toddlers and preschoolers.
By rebuilding First Step for Families we have more than doubled its capacity,
and we are able to provide greatly improved services - so that fewer children
and parents in our community will have to go without safe shelter. |
