Tenderloin Health, a resource center for homeless people living with HIV, will be losing part of their funding from The City this month. St. Anthony’s neighbors at 183 Golden Gate Avenue are not shutting their doors permanently; they are starting services later to adjust to their decreased budget.

“We’re not going to be able to operate in the morning,” Jeannie Little, Director of Community Services at Tenderloin Health, told CBS 5 yesterday.

Dariush Kayhan, the homeless policy director for the mayor’s office, said yesterday that the city is working to keep Tenderloin Health’s programs open and is “renegotiating their contract based on available funding.”

We hope the best for our friends at Tenderloin Health, and more importantly for the people they serve.

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.

The primary goal of the Dining Room is to provide sustenance for our hungry guests in and environment of dignity and respect.  In doing this we are able to provide a welcoming community, friendly ears to listen, and referrals to other services in St. Anthony Foundation’s network of care.  Our ability to serve every guest in the Dining Room is made greater by truly understanding them and their specific needs.

More than one third of our guests rely on the meals served in the Dining Room as their only source of food each day; many must decide between paying for rent or even for medicine before budgeting for food. We understand that people with food insecurities need to reach satiety in their main meal of the day, to accomplish that a meal with 20% fat is advised.

Beef and other meats are critical to our guests.  The concentrated protein helps prevent the cravings that lead guests to spend what little money they may have on fast food or convenience store items high in saturated and trans fats. All of these foods can cause further harm to our guests’ health when eaten on a regular basis, leading to obesity and related diseases, like diabetes.

The homeless and low-income population we serve also need a supplemental diet that focuses on prevention and other special needs such as wound healing, vision impairment and bone health. To ensure that the Dining Room is providing meals that best meet these needs, St. Anthony’s invited a Registered Dietitian to conduct a nutritional assessment of our food. The results indicated that the Dining Room’s menu provides excellent sources of macro and micronutrients, reflecting home cooked meals rather than processed foods. Meals also contain higher nutritional value, not only when compared to the alternatives found in our neighborhood, such as fast food and inexpensive convenience store snacks, but also when compared to other food service agencies.

The study showed Vitamins E, A and K at “good” levels. To raise that rating to “excellent” the Dining Room immediately doubled the amount of spinach and carrots cooked in meals, and has also added more meals with tuna to increase Omega-3 intake. Meals are now being cooked with vegetable oil rather than margarine, which immediately decreases trans fats 15%, with a long term goal of completely eliminating trans fats by 2010.