Former Street Beautification team member Roger cleaning in front of iconic North Beach spot Caffe Trieste. After years of service with North Beach Citizens, he now has full-time union employment.
One of the greatest challenges facing San Francisco is helping extremely low-income people find their way off the streets and out of homelessness. At North Beach Citizens we work every day to help our clients understand the root causes of their homelessness and help them find the stability needed to avoid falling back into homelessness.
Our proven model of creating stability in the lives of our clients yields excellent results that could easily be implemented in communities around the country.
It all starts with our drop-in center where we intake new clients. Monday through Friday, from 9:00am – 4:00pm, we open our doors and make ourselves available to anyone in need. We help clients, new and old, and work with them to secure the basics like government-issued ID, healthcare, benefits, dental care, and even mental health support. Once a client makes a connection with North Beach Citizens, our goal is to provide the continual support they need to stay housed and rebuild their lives.
One of our most successful programs to create stability for our clients is our Street Beautification Team. The program, which we started in 2003, provides clients with the routine of a daily work schedule, stipends for groceries, and a sense of pride in giving back to their community.
Here’s how it works: Monday through Friday, from 1:00-1:30pm with our program supervisor, active clients come to our office and grab their cleaning supplies and equipment. Our team, with a familiarity of the district, determines the areas that need to be cleaned. Once ready, our clients dedicate an hour and a half to collect trash, sweep, and beautify our historic North Beach corridors. In many cases, clients already know their way around the neighborhood because of their time living on the streets. As a result, many individuals like to take ownership of their former areas and they make connections with neighbors and businesses, building a sense of community for all.
Eventually, some stabilized clients will “graduate” and use the routine, skills, and experience they have acquired to start a full-time job. For those that don’t move on to employment, the weekly schedule of cleaning the streets provides our counselors with a way to check-in and see clients every day and make sure they don’t fall back into homelessness due to ongoing medical and mental health challenges.
Street Beautification volunteer Ralph, who uses his experience with North Beach Citizens and presence in the community to reach out to those experiencing homelessness and bring them to our doors.
To ensure the Street Beautification Teams are effective, we keep record of how many bags of trash they collect each day. Annually, our team collects 13,000 bags of trash off the streets! And each team member is trained to serve as our eyes and ears, letting us know about problem areas and issues such as illegal dumping. That way, we can work with 3-1-1 and the city’s Department of Public Works to remove the trash and ensure North Beach is clean and vibrant for neighbors and tourists alike.
On any given day, we average 10-11 clients that come in to help clean the community. Thanks to a grant from the City’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, we are able to offer a stipend for our volunteers’ efforts beautifying the neighborhood.
Over the years, we’ve seen the transformative impact the Street Beautification Program has in stabilizing people’s lives. People like Raymond, our military veteran client that has a standing offer from Caffe Trieste for a free cup of coffee as a token of gratitude for his hard work cleaning their block…or Ralph, one of our longest tenured clients who uses the program to entice people to seek help and get off the streets…Or Roger, our wonderful client that now has a union job at Safeway after a stint with the street beautification program.
What we have learned after 21 years is that stability is built through devoted community work. To achieve success and help people transition out of homelessness, it’s vital that the relationships we establish with clients are built on trust, integrity, and respect - because our work is far from over. The path to self-sufficiency and stabilization is long, but it is inspiring to share in the success of our clients as they rebuild their lives. For many of our clients, the one constant on their journey is that our door is always open and our team is always available when people need help.