Neighborhood begins to change despite stereotypes
by Edgar Mendez, Bay Area Multicultural Media Academy
“What is remarkable about the community is that it reaches out to the people who reside in the Tenderloin community to come out and participate in what it has to offer.”
There’s been much in the news lately about Americans losing their homes. Many hardworking families are now drastically increasing their efforts to keep up with mortgages or rent.
Yesterday’s USA Today told the story of Tracy Mosely, a single mother of five facing homelessness who’s rental house recently fell into foreclosure. In the face of the shifting economy, the part-time restaurant hostess is finding it difficult to balance the demands of her already tight budget and simultaneously coming up with a rental deposit for a new home.
I’ve hear stories like Tracy’s on a daily basis. When staying housed becomes the highest priority many spend what little their family has on rent. Lack of nutritious food and proper medical care brings new families to our doors everday. The Social Work Center at St. Anthony Foundation provides San Franciscans facing homelessness with referrals to rental assistance, supplemental food programs, legal assistance and money management services.
In light of all the impending budget cuts to many of San Francisco’s health and human services, I’ve been thinking about one of our community’s most important, and yet often overlooked social services–mental health care. Far too often, even in my own life I overlook anxiety, stress and other mental health issues as secondary and less important than the physical ailments I might face. But the truth is, the line between mental and physical health is less distinguishable than we think.
I recently spent some time with St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic’s therapists, who explained that more and more of the physical ailments patients present with are difficult to diagnose medically. In fact, a recent study indicates that about 70% of all medical appointments are for problems stemming from psychosocial issues. Insomnia, tension headaches, and non-localized pain are just a few of the most prevalent “somatic complaints”–symptoms that we often conceptualize as physical but are actually closely tied to issues like stress or anxiety. Because of the social stigma surrounding mental health issues and other factors, however, the majority of those in need of mental health treatment don’t receive care at all. For many of the poor and homeless patients we see in the Clinic, untreated mental health problems are the greatest barrier to maintaining healthy lifestyles and achieving good overall health.
The Clinic is often the first point of contact for patients who, because of stigma and/or cultural barriers, lack of insurance, or poverty, would not otherwise seek out mental health services in a traditional setting. In addition to primary care and specialty services, we provide onsite individual therapy, nutrition counseling, and smoking cessation counseling. We provide group therapy focused on stress reduction, as well as a support group for Latina women. We help patients with chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma understand and take control of their condition through self-management counseling and peer support groups.
We provide all of these services in an integrated, primary care setting, helping reduce barriers to vital mental health treatment. This approach to care helps ensure that any door is the right door in accessing the holistic range of care we all need to thrive.
Peering over the tables of guests in St. Anthony’s Dining Room, after our senior guests have filled their stomachs and continued with their day, I am most accustomed to seeing adult men with women woven into the crowd. When you look toward the back, however, tucked away from the commotion in the front is a special section for families. This section has mothers and their children, families who have come to rely on the Dining Room for it’s safe community environment to provide the hard-sought nourishment their children need.
So often we fail to pay attention to the silent hungry, those little ones who cannot sustain or support themselves. Low-income families often rely on free school meals to supplement what they can provide at home. For many families the nutritional food children need is not within their financial means, and the programs aimed at helping to provide it have restrictions adding extra hurdles to access.
Needless to say, something needs to change. Attitudes towards social services such as food stamps and assistance vary from empathetic to aggressive, the target of most arguments being the adults affected, not the thousands of children in each city that are affected by these policies. The U.S. Conference of Mayors have vowed to find a solution. San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom urged the conference to adopt a measure to end child hunger in America. It is a measure that seems so obvious and elementary, yet one in four children in San Francisco are at risk of hunger. According to Bay Area Food Banks 48 pecent of the food they provide in Northern California goes to feed children.
We may be upset and wrapped in disbelief that these statistics are real, or how they have come to be. The emotion more important than that frustration is determination, and converting that to action. It may be long overdue, but never too late to seek change.
I’m up to my neck in boxes. St. Anthony’s newsletters, appeal letters, donation boxes, raffle prizes, party supplies, the white lunch bags and colored ribbons we used last winter to make Christmas gift bags for every person who ate in the Dining Room that day. All the accourtrements and accessories of a fundraising office. Tomorrow I’ll work at the Foundation Center while professional movers carry my little bandwagon into the new, LEED-certified building at 150 Golden Gate. I’ll miss my London view, as I call it: the limestone wall and Greek columns of the old Hibernia bank, the gate with the black iron palings at the end of the alley opening onto McAllister Street, and the brick of the Renoir Hotel across the street with the green copper cornices on the roof. But my little loss is San Francisco’s grand harvest.
In the new building, St. Anthony Foundation will serve 5,000 more patients every year at the Free Medical Clinic, 200 more clients every year in the Employment Program and Learning Center, 375 more clients every month in the Social Work Center, without increasing staff. Eventually, the Dining Room will move into 150 Golden Gate on a long-term, temporary basis while we tear down this building and perform the same magic here. Heaven knows the city’s poor and homeless residents need the extra help.
It is sometimes amusing, and sometimes otherwise, to hear people who have never done a day’s fundraising in their lives criticize the imaginary effects of fundraising. Every development professional knows the costs and the benefits of a Capital Campaign. Capital Campaigns take a great deal of energy and a lot more time than we’d like. You have to print new materials and talk to a lot of people. That’s the cost.
Capital Campaigns attract new donors, most of whom stay on as major donors after the campaign is over. People don’t make a 6- or 7-figure investment in an organization and then drop the relationship. Capital Campaigns increase the annual fund, partly because donors who are unable to make a capital gift raise their annual amount, partly because the publicity and public education needed to run a Capital Campaign inspire both veteran donors and new friends to do more. Capital Campaigns put organizations on their toes and propel them into updating and improving their program activities, their materials, and their business practices, in order to live up to the awesome responsibility of raising and spending that much money. Those are just some of the benefits.
Yes, a Capital Campaign is an enormous investment. But the expenses come out of a different pot from the money we raise for services to our poor and homeless neighbors. And tomorrow, the benefits will go to those services and those neighbors. From new donors and from donors increasing their gifts, we’re building a larger, more useful St. Anthony Foundation. That’s good for our guests, today and in the decades to come. I think our guests are worth the investment.
Summer in San Francisco is here, and while the city is not known for its scorching hot temperatures this time of year, St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic expects to see many cases of sun burns and dehydration in the next few months.
At St. Anthony Dining Room guests can come in for a meal and drink as many refills of water as they can. Patients at The Clinic are free to “goop up” with UV blocking sunscreen to protect their skin from sunburn, or are given cremes to soothe painful sunburns.
Hunger and medical needs effect poor San Franciscans in all seasons, not just the holidays. At St. Anthony Foundation we brace ourselves in the midst of economic uncertainty to face these challenges during the summer months.
Today St. Anthony Dining Room celebrated the Feast Of St. Anthony with a thinly sliced flank steaks served with mashed potatoes and sauce. Desert was a choice of either fresh watermellon slices or a choclate cookie. Many opted for both!
An astounding 3,175 meals were served today, a strong indicator of the recent economic troubles facing many San Franciscans and the meal programs that sustain them. An anynomous donor dropped off 1,600 pounds of steak this weak, making this meal a bountiful a tribute to the work of St. Anthony.
All the recent talk of late about rising food costs has got me thinking more about the hidden costs to our poor and homeless neighbors. That is, as nutritious food becomes less accessible, people rely more and more on cheap food that is high in fat but low in nutritional value. But while that cheeseburger may be cheap, fast food continues to take an expensive toll on the health of our community. Each day, we see the repercussions of poor nutrition in the form of diabetes, obesity, and heart problems.
St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic takes a holistic approach to these issues. Through our recently implemented family nutrition classes, we engage families in a course of nutrition education, counseling, and support to improve their eating and lifestyle habits. Classes cover important topics such as food group basics, portion sizes, reading labels, and instruction on healthy cooking. We work collaboratively with each family to develop a plan for healthy living and exercise. At the end of each class, we provide incentives such as fresh fruit and vegetables from the local farmer’s market or a gift card to the supermarket.
As with all of the Clinic’s services, we strive to meet our patients where they are with education and support that makes sense within their life circumstances and cultural background. As most of the class participants are recent Latino immigrants, our bilingual staff provide the classes in Spanish and English. To work with participants’ limited budgets and schedules, we teach them techniques for shopping for foods that are both nutritious and affordable. We provide nutritious recipes and cooking lessons for meals that appeal to the whole family and are easy to prepare with limited cooking facilities.
This combination of education and empowerment helps our guests get on the right track towards eating better and improving their health and quality of life.
While many of us are sighing a great breath of relief at the defeat of Proposition 98 last night – a ballot measure that would have undermined rent control – there’s another crisis coming that we need to prevent.
The budget going before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors carries a $30-million cut in health and human services. It’s mostly coming out of city funding to non-profits that serve the very poor.
St. Anthony Foundation doesn’t receive any of this money. We don’t seek government funding, as a matter of policy. But we are one of the non-profits that catch San Franciscans who fall through the safety net. We are concerned about our colleagues and about the people all of us are committed to serving.
According to Calvin Welch of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, non-profits and faith-based organizations in San Francisco provide a huge portion of the direct services for those who have no other resource. About 70% of senior services. About 70% of mental health services. About 80% of residential drug treatment programs. About 50 – 60% of all services to homeless people. Many of the care givers at these organizations are pretty sure that the next stop for every person they can’t help is the street.
It’s not being covered in the local print media. But you can let decision makers hear from you in the next 2 weeks.
It doesn’t have to happen. There are other things to cut. Don’t wait until the damage is done.
Vote. If you care about teachers, vote. If you care about the economy, vote. If you want your input noted regarding the future development of your city, vote. If you have a bone to pick, if you want to change the system, if you want status quo upheld. Vote. Vote. Vote.
If you can, do. All the protests and shiny signage, heated conversation and ideological scuffles do nothing but provide minor agitation, the voter booth is where you can manifest real change.
Vote today! Click here to find your polling place and view a sample ballot. »