Context: The Housing First for Families Campaign has been based out of the Coalition on Homelessness since 2005. At its inception, it set three primary goals to attempt to end family homelessness in San Francisco: 1) to triple eviction prevention funds, so that housed families could stay housed; 2) to create a substantive rental subsidy that would allow low-income San Francisco families to access market-rate housing; and, 3) to create enough safe, dignified, affordable housing for every homeless family in San Francisco. Within a year of their formation, they had already succeeded in their first two goals. However, the bureaucracy of the Human Service Agency quickly perverted the second of these, and the rental subsidy saw various amendments in its implementation that made it less useful for the lowest-income families. Much of the Campaign’s work this past year has been in trying to get those changes reversed.

For me, 2008 was a great undertaking, as we succeeded in involving homeless and underhoused families in the Housing First Campaign and the rental subsidy for low-income families—the latter of which we had already won thanks to our tenacity and perseverance. This showed us that when one wants to achieve something, despite obstance, one can achieve it. Above all, we developed leadership among our families, with a very close relationship, full of solidarity.

With respect to the Housing First Campaign, it was the beginning of an involvement in something quite unknown, for me, as it was the first time that I ever had any very large responsibility. But at the same time, the campaign was a path to achieve a goal I—and a lot of other low-income families—had had for a lng time: We needed and need cheap housing that gives our children the opportunity to grow in their own space.

Despite the amount of time we spent fighting and fighting, over and over again, we did not succeed in getting the Mayor or the Human Services Agency to to accept our proposal, and I believe that to achieve this we’re going to need to keep on fighting, with the same tenacity and perseverence that got us this far.

I learned through working on the rental subsidy that many times, things don’t turn out the way one would want. Despite the fact that we won the subsidy, there are still a lot of obstacles in our way that we’re going to sort out before eligible families or those already on the program can obtain the maximum benefit of the program. Again, there’s a lot of fighting left to go.

As for my plans in 2009, the first thing is that I want us to be able to avoid the budget cuts: If they cut our programs, I think that this would make it easy for them to not have to work with our families, and this, for me, would be a complete catastrophe. I think that for me this cannot be acceptable, so my goal is to keep on struggling forward, os that the budget for housing first stays a reality. I also need to keep fighting so that they extend the rental subsidy to five years, or to an indefinite period, or as long as recipient families need it.

There’s still a lot for us to do. It’s my greatest goal for us to be able to achieve this in 2009.

silviaflores

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