SPIRIT OF SANTA PAULA
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Mission Statement
SPIRIT of Santa Paula works diligently to link established Community Agencies providing services to our neighbors in need. We are on the ground in our community and are the field soldiers who have built trusted relationships with the least powerful and most vulnerable people in the Santa Clara River Valley, working our way into the hearts and homes of people with the greatest needs. Spirit supports and encourages fledgling programs and startup pantries in our Community with our expertise, our rescued food, and supplies. Spirit’s work: We work in the areas of housing, food, utilities, transportation, emergency needs such as tires, batteries, co-pays, gasoline, auto parts, glasses, car registrations and community services hours preventing homelessness. We are now the Santa Paula arm for rescuing commercially prepared unserved food under a Memorandum Of Understanding with the Waste-Free Ventura County, part of Ventura County Public Health and the State of California, CalRecycle. We have an agreement with Santa Paula Unified School District to pick up unserved cafeteria meals each day from every school in the district (when they are in session). This food is properly stored at our Harvard facility and distributed at our daily Resource Center, our Year-Round Homeless Shelter and our two weekly Community Food Pantries. In 2018, we received a grant from the State of California, Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) through California Climate Investments to rescue food with our two refrigerated box trucks and van. None of this grant was allocated for operations--wages, insurance, fuel, repairs. All of these expenses come from our general budget. In the months, 2020, from January to April, we have rescued over 100,000 lbs of unserved food from restaurants, grocery stores, cafeterias, and caterers. This grant also covered $52,000 to upgrade our kitchen to a Ventura County Environmental Health Department permitted, certified Commercial kitchen at “Harvard”, our Year-Round Shelter and Resource Center. In February of 2020, our 4500-sf commercial building we call “Harvard” was donated to SPIRIT for use as an emergency shelter and is now our Year-Round Homeless Shelter. This gift alone helps our operating budget dramatically, allowing more funds available for our many programs. Our Food Handling staff and volunteers are ServSafe Certified and have two certificated food managers as well as several food handlers. We provide funds for rent and utilities to families unable to meet their commitments. We work with families at all levels of need. We are a FOOD Share agency and deliver USDA food commodities to local residents at our two weekly Food Pantries in Santa Paula. Many Meals, our Wednesday night hot dinner, is temporarily on hold until COVID has left us. COVID has changed everything for everyone everywhere. Entrance has been restricted due to the COVID-19 environment. We are providing daily “takeout” meals instead of Inside dining for our unsheltered individuals who have chosen to not shelter in place with us. We installed two containment pods for guests who may exhibit health conditions. A shower pod has been donated to provide daily showers for guests along with laundry facilities. We purchased a handicap accessible portable restroom and hand wash station to serve our unsheltered guests due to restricted access to the building.
About This Cause
A little History: SPIRIT of Santa Paula was formed in 2002 by group of local business people who saw the need to be standing the gap for people caught between politics, the economy, our elected officials, and our churches. Our name stands for Santa Paulans Investing in Relationships of Integrity and Trust (SPIRIT). Our original incorporation has taken us to fascinating work throughout the Community on behalf of homeless and food insecure residents. It continues to be our honor to serve our greater Community wherever help is needed. Christmas Eve day of 2008 is where our work with our Homeless population began. It was particularly cold and drizzly. The Chaplain for Santa Paula Fire Department who is a member of SPIRIT of Santa Paula, learned a homeless person had died early that morning. She spent the afternoon with a local police lieutenant visiting areas where homeless were living. It was apparent to her that something needed to be done for this population. In the next few days, there were several meetings with the Director of the Ventura County Homeless and Housing Coalition and County Agencies to learn what possibilities existed for serving our community. Shelter seemed to be the most urgent need, but the most difficult to deliver. We decided to begin a meal program. Being homeless is manageable. Being hungry is not. One of the best cures for homelessness is prevention. If a family’s funds can be diverted from supplying groceries to rent or utilities, that family has a better chance of remaining sheltered. Our full-time executive director works on a volunteer basis. The bookkeeping services are provided by a local corporation as an in-kind donation. We began our work in 2008 in a fragile and unfolding economy. Things are not better for many even today although we can point to many successes due to our incredible partnership with the Ventura County Healthcare Agency. We support the weekly shower program at the One-Stop. We work with Whole Person Care program in providing housing assistance to homeless people including seniors with a documented disability. We work closely with Behavioral Health to serve our homeless population, and we supervise the homeless count for the County of Ventura each year. We have added five business-minded people to our Board of Directors to enhance the input and influence of our small non-profit organization. We are changing our accounting practices to conform to industry standards for non-profit organizations. Our accounting services have expanded to a group specializing in non-profit organizations, Decker, Farrell, and McCoy in Camarillo. Our first audit was completed this year. Our target population for our Shelter, Food Pantries and Rental Assistance is the homeless among us to include the communities of Fillmore and Piru, and the least powerful and most vulnerable people. As we reach our people, we automatically connect with their families who need healthcare, housing assistance and necessities keeping them employed and sheltered. COVID has been devastating for so many in our Santa Clara River Valley. In our many years doing this work, we have seen homelessness begins with a money shortage which causes utility turn-offs and cars being towed for lack of current registration. This automatically creates homelessness for those living in their car. As professional property managers as well, we see the double jeopardy of losing their housing assistance if the unit becomes uninhabitable because of loss of utilities. If the occupants lose their housing, they cannot get it back and homelessness is next. The financial assistance has ranged from $100 to $1200 on the high end. In that case, they waited too long to get help. The Applicants come to the director’s daytime office. Our regular hours are weekdays from 8 am to 6 pm. The director is available seven days a week at the main location and 24 hours by phone. Because of our daily services to the homeless population and the weekly events offered to them and our vulnerable populations, we connect regularly. Our services are provided to every County agency. The support of the Healthcare Agency providing One Stop services connects our clients to additional services. We regularly distribute flyers on various programs and offerings of other agencies. We are on the radar for anyone who needs help. SPIRIT's case management and client tracking process: • We have three registered HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) licenses for registering and tracking clients. • We utilize a system called Meal Connect to record all visitors to the Food Pantries and to Many Meals (when active). • We have our own data base which allows us to track how many times our people have been to the Resource Center and our Year-Round Shelter. • On our sign-in sheets, guests can voluntarily provide their birth date to help us coordinate to see if they are already in HMIS. • We currently meet the guidelines established for the proper management of Rental Assistance and have a reliable system in place to process. Emergency Assistance; • Emergency assistance is a defined need which directly impacts shelter: utilities, car repairs which impact getting to work, child care safety which affects getting to work, rental assistance to keep them sheltered. • We will work directly with the service provider asking for receipts, copies of estimates and invoices. We attempt to work out a payment plan and guarantee the first payment. This is often enough assistance to get the client started. We never pay for all of a particular need and we never rely on verbal arrangement. • Checks are written to the service provider, not the client. We will help more than once only if a change in circumstances justify it such as a job loss for the other breadwinner in the household which means two job losses in a year. • Checks are never written to the beneficiary – only the vendor. We are so well known, no one rejects a check from SPIRIT of Santa Paula. Current conditions in our Community: • The need in Santa Paula is great. According to DATA USA, 2018, the median household income in Santa Paula is $56,875 whereas the median household income in greater Ventura County is $84,566. Santa Paula shows a14.2% poverty rate compared with 9.57% of Ventura County residents. • SPIRIT of Santa Paula addresses the needs of our city's low and moderate income residents by offering two huge Food Pantries per week; our Resource Center for our unsheltered homeless guests, providing takeout meals and outdoor sanitary facilities; weekly showers for our unsheltered Homeless at a local church in coordination with local County Agencies; Food Rescue under contract with CalRecycle and in coordination with Food Share; and weekly Laundry services for our unsheltered homeless in addition to our primary Year-Round Homeless Shelter, participating with Ventura County Continuum of Care and HMIS. By caring for our unsheltered neighbors, our overall Community is not feeling as encumbered by otherwise inappropriate behavior some of our neighbors may display. • Santa Paula's Downtown Business Community is beginning to recognize there are fewer Homeless Downtown since we moved the Spirit shelter and Resource Center to the Harvard located near the outskirts of the City. • We are assisting as many of our guests are looking forward to finding jobs and permanent housing. We have entered all our guests into HMIS and will continue to do so as new guests are requesting shelter entrance. The more working; the fewer will be on the streets.