Dear PATH supporters,
During the first of the year, I wanted to send you a greeting from the staff leadership team.
As we all know, homelessness has become a crucial, heart-wrenching social crisis throughout the State of California. Some people and neighborhoods respond to this with frustration or even anger. But I see PATH’s response to homelessness as inspiring — a mixture of compassion, innovation, responsibility, cost effectiveness, and just plain hard work.
To help a person move from the streets to a home is not easy. (If it were easy, homelessness would quickly be solved.) It really takes a social enterprise to create an ongoing movement to help thousands of people and families end their homelessness.
And, yes, a social movement is what we — PATH — have created. The PATH movement is a group of more than 60 board and advisory board members, more than 600 staff, and more than 20,000 supporters and volunteers working in 125 cities throughout the State.
Together, we are ending homelessness for almost 1,500 people and families each year (an average of 20-30 people and families each week) by moving them into their own homes.
The highlights of PATH’s work across the state are inspiring:
PATH San Jose/Silicon Valley: ground breaking of one of San Jose’s first supportive housing developments, expansion of street outreach across the city, and preparation of two additional supportive housing developments (one as a developer and both as the services operator).
PATH Greater San Diego: implementation of a county-wide medical/street outreach program, celebration of PATH SD’s fifth anniversary, and preparation of three additional supportive housing developments (one as a co-developer, and all as the services operator).
PATH Greater Los Angeles: start-up of three new Bridge Housing shelters (almost 200 additional shelter beds), finished PATH Metro Villas Phase One (65 units) and Inglewood (40 units for seniors), started Lease Up! (An innovative program and app that helps connect renters with landlords), expansion of street outreach teams on LA’s Metro trains and buses, and preparing more supportive housing developments. (It’s hard to list all of LA’s work… veterans, families, housing support, outreach, etc.)
PATH Santa Barbara/Central Coast: Helped the region plan for state funding, setting up a Lease Up! Program, planning for supportive housing, and expanded its locally-popular Making It Home tour event.
All of this would not have happened without a committed and talented program team, and the equally committed and talented support teams: HR/Admin (increased our staff by more than 100 people), finance (increased financial support for people needing assistance to move into homes), operations (set up numerous new facilities), and fund development (increased our revenue by 19.2%)!
Finally, we celebrated our 35th anniversary as a community-based organization, with a wonderful and inspiring party where we honored Claire and Charles Orr, PATH’s founders.
We are looking forward to 2019… more grand openings, working on creative housing solutions (think containers and villages) with some Advisory Board members, emphasizing program quality over quantity, advocacy (making our voice heard in Sacramento and DC), working on diversity, equity and inclusion as values within PATH, and creating a statewide infrastructure (rather than a LA headquarters, we are creating office “hubs” in San Diego, Metro Los Angeles, Westside LA, South County LA, Santa Barbara, and San Jose).
There is a lot going on within PATH across the state.
But the real success in our work is simple: in 2018, more than a thousand people and families celebrated the holidays in their own homes, rather than on the streets. That’s what we are all about.
Thank you for making this happen.
Joel
CEO, PATH