St. Anthony Foundation advocates for public policies that will promote nutrition and healthy eating for all, regardless of income.  We were very excited that two of the anti-hunger bills that we’ve supported for years were signed into law in 2008.

New Anti-Hunger Bills

AB 433 removes the asset test for Food  Stamp applicants.  This means that low-income families with savings or retirement accounts worth more than $2,000 will no longer be denied Food Stamps.  The passage of this bill is timely: since the bill was signed this fall, California’s unemployment rate has climbed steadlily.  AB 433 will help newly-unemployed families afford food without depleting their savings.

AB 2300 is an important step forward in helping reduce paperwork burdens on low-income families.  AB 2300 allows families who are already  enrolled in Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program) to enroll their children (and maintain enrollment) in free school meals without additional paperwork.

More work ahead in 2009

During this economic downturn, a lot of political energy will be spent on figuring out how to stimulate the economy.  Economists of all stripes believe that increasing access to Food Stamps is one of the most effective ways to do this.    Not only do Food Stamps allow struggling families to put nutritious food on the table, they create a multiplier effect in local economies, with each dollar of food stamps generating $1.84 in economic activity.  This economic activity not only helps grocers and growers, but also state and local governments.

Join us for Hunger Action Day!

St. Anthony Foundation will be working with anti-hunger groups from across the state to urge our Sacramento legislators to help improve access to the Food Stamp program by:

• Simplifying the food stamp application process.
• Enacting reforms that will allow more low income single adults to access Food Stamps.
• Making it possible for more persons in drug/alcohol recovery programs to access Food Stamps and decrease the likelihood of recidivism.

Hunger Action Day will be on Wednesday May 20, 2009.  If you’d like to join St. Anthony Foundation in advocating for anti-hunger legislation at Hunger Action Day, contact Colleen Rivecca at crivecca@stanthonysf.org.

Nearly five years after the Mayor Gavin Newsom’s release of the Ten-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, the majority of San Francisco’s homeless population is still out in the rain. Mayor Newsom created a 33-member council of advocates, legislators and service providers to advise the most effective strategy to end chronic homelessness, and guide his policy-making in the areas of homelessness.

“The plan produced by the Ten-Year Planning Council is both a blueprint and a bold step toward a new and revolutionary way to break the cycle of chronic homelessness,” concluded Newsom, in his office’s press release following the release of the plan in June 2004.

It unfortunately appears this blueprint has been collecting dust, and lays the ground work for a home the homeless will never see.

The plan’s central strategy is a housing first model. The “Housing First” model emphasizes immediate placement of the individual in permanent housing, where they have access to services, on site, necessary to stabilize the individuals and keep them housed.

A few key statistics found in the Ten-Year Plan:

The cost to provide one chronically homeless person permanent, supportive housing, with treatment and care is nearly one-fourth of the cost to care for the same person using Emergency Room services and/or incarceration costs San Francisco. ($16,000/year versus $61,000/year.)

San Francisco has the highest per capita rate of homelessness of any major American city.

7,000 homeless people live in SF at a given time. Some estimates put the number as high as 15,000.

There are 1,623 homeless kids in the San Francisco school system.

Up to 20% of homeless people have full-time jobs; 30% of adults in homeless families have full-time jobs. (The National Coalition for the Homeless)

52% of Bay Area cities said more mental health services is the most effective way to reduce homelessness. (U.S. Conference of Mayors 2007 Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness)

With the looming budget crisis and drastic cuts threatening the already starved social service programs, many of the programs required for this plan to work are facing devastating funding reductions, if not complete elimination. The 2009 bi-annual city-wide homeless count was conducted January 27; the results of this count will perhaps shed light on what progress has been made.

Most of us know that guests at St. Anthony Foundation have amazing stories. Not everyone realizes that some of our donors do, too. A woman who escaped from China during the early years of Communism has left St. Anthony’s $100,000.

Mary Westwood Hyndman was born in Shanghai and went to Catholic schools there, where she learned fluent English. She married in 1945. Four years later, the Communist Party took control of the city. She and her family endured 8 years of government surveillance and intermittent questioning. Finally, they decided to leave.

The family made the 18-day voyage to San Francisco in 1957, and never went back. The only time Mary left the U.S. again was a trip to London to visit the grave of her father, who had served in Shanghai under British rule. The refugee experience left its mark. Her family says she chose St. Anthony Foundation for her bequest partly because she was touched by our no-questions-asked service to immigrant families.

St. Anthony’s unites vastly different people in an unlikely community. Mary’s bequest will help us serve immigrant families from Mexico, Central America, and Southeast Asia. It will feed, clothe, and counsel people with mental and addictive illness who come from Mongolia, Korea, and California. It will pay for supportive housing for elderly women from China, Russia, the Philippines, and the Fillmore. All of these people are one community in St. Anthony Foundation; all will share in Mary Hyndman’s bequest.

Learn more about Planned Giving »

Today, San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius writes about the growing number of families entering homelessness during what has been one of the coldest Decembers San Francisco has seen in years.

The timing couldn’t be worse.

San Francisco is in the worst budget crisis it has seen in 70 years. According to City Homeless Policy Director, Dariush Kayhan, the number of families requesting assistance is currently up “50 percent more than we had one year ago.”

We’ve been seeing the numbers slowly increase for a year now. Families of all shapes and sizes are coming to St. Anthony Foundation for food, clothing, medical care and assistance in navigating through the already over crowded social service system.

Because St. Anthony’s doesn’t accept government funding of any kind we can respond quickly to emergencies like this. And because we are supported entirely by private donations we aren’t in jeopardy when the city is in financial crisis at the same time as it’s people.

Reuters reported yesterday on the growing number of homeless families in the United States. San Francisco’s four shelters are “beyond full,” with at least 450 families with 800 children living in single-room hotels in the city.

(Click here to read the entire article …)

There are many of us who do not own stocks, who aren’t really too sure how the erratic and failing market is going to affect us.  We have been inundated with news stories reporting the market’s every ominous move with only a slippery grasp on how this will manifest itself in our daily lives.

Perhaps the best indicator would be to step back and visualize the safety net, stretching up San Francisco’s Market Street.  Starting with it’s already frayed ends in the Tenderloin, so many of our poor and homeless neighbors have slipped through this outdated and insufficient web.  As you continue up to Powell Street, we see the city’s retail and tourist industry workers, struggling to collect enough hours to make ends meet; maybe picking up another job, or restricting their spending which cuts into rent, medication or, most often, into family food budgets.

Now more than ever St. Anthony Foundation is seeing low-income families, the working poor, people working two and three jobs to survive in this city, coming in for a meal, for a food bag, for medical care that they cannot afford to provide for themselves or families.  Where there was once even if modestly, at least security, this safety net has frayed perilously higher up the economic ladder than we have seen in decades.

Instability weaves its way through the twine of this net reaching all the way up to Montgomery, to closing banks, out of work brokers and down-sizing businesses.  It is now that the story of hard times makes the front page everyday.

From the stock market, to our supermarkets, up Market St. we are seeing the effects.  It doesn’t need to come from the ticker, no industry experts analysis,  we see it in the streets of our city, in the faces of our guests.

Low-income San Franciscans will pay for the second disappointing public budget of the year. Last month, the city passed a budget with staggering cuts to health and human services, especially for poor people. The city budget will reduce or close many non-profits serving the poor.

This month, the state ended the longest budget stalemate in California’s history by passing one that slashes services to the poor and homeless. These are the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable.

The Working Poor

• $70 million cut from child care for CalWorks families
• CalWorkers paid the same wages as in 2004

Seniors

• The entire $190.1 million cut from Senior Citizens Property and Renters’ Tax Assistance
• All cost of living increases cut for 2 consecutive years
• Cuts in Senior Community Employment, Home Delivered Meals, Adult Protective Services, and Multipurpose Senior Services Program

Families and Sick People

• Inadequate cap on dental coverage for children in the Healthy Families program
• Apply twice a year to keep children in Medi-Cal
• $7.7 million cut from mental health managed care
• 5% cut in provider rate for health, dental, and vision plans
• No California Prescription Drug Program for another year

The Homeless

• Complete elimination of the Emergency Homeless Assistance Program. Two San Francisco shelters will lose significant funding.

At St. Anthony Foundation, we’re getting ready for the new guests these cuts will bring to our doors.  That’s why we’re putting up new facilities and refocusing our work. The future is asking more of all of us.