Samaritan House

Client and food services: in fy22, we served 22,221 clients with 253,171 services including financial assistance, food, shelter, healthcare and other essential services. The food & nutrition program continued its contactless food distributions, most of which are drive-through and outdoor, as well as provided 4 million pounds of food, including more than 264,000 bags of groceries, collectively totaling more than 2.3 million annual meals to 7,246 families (16,833 individuals). Food costs offset an average of $1,332 per household, valued at $9,648,668. Samaritan House served 3,270 families, including 5,624 youth & teens, in 2022's holiday program. Kids closet distributed 21,399 items of new and slightly used clothing to kids and teens, as well as nearly 177,867 diapers to babies and toddlers in need. The back-to-school program distributed 3,000 new backpacks filled with grade-appropriate supplies, ensuring that children started the school year on track and focused on learning. We filed tax returns for 211 individuals, resulting in $203,342 in federal/state refunds, $39,046 earned income tax credits (eitc), as well as $75,900 in child tax credits (ctc) and additional child tax credits (actc). Samaritan House also serves as the fiscal sponsor for the chronicle season of sharing fund, and distributed $1,430,580 to low-income families in emergency financial assistance on behalf of seven core service agencies serving san mateo county.

Free medical and dental clinics: the free clinics of san mateo and redwood city provide medical, dental, vision and mental health services at no cost to medically underserved residents of san mateo county. Clinic patients are uninsured and unable to afford 'out of-pocket' healthcare costs, such as premiums, copays or deductibles of coverage. Despite the adjustment to the delivery of care, the free clinics have remained operational since the early days of the pandemic via tele-health, video care, and limited in-person visits, keeping everyone safe while delivering necessary short-term care. In fy22, the clinics served 6,530 patient visits with the help of 83 volunteer professionals. Both clinics rely on a volunteer-based model of service, including volunteer medical professionals, such as physicians, nurses, dentists, nurse practitioners, interpreters, and other clinical and administrative staff, to operate the clinics. Volunteers contributed 3,561 volunteer hours in fy22. Since 2016, we have operated California's first two food pharmacies where patients with diabetes fill "prescriptions" for free nutritious food. Since the onset of covid-19, distribution of medication and food pharmacy 'prescriptions' moved to a curbside pickup model. Through our food pharmacies, we distributed 8,245 bags of food to 838 patients. Providing primary and preventive care to the medically underserved and uninsured not only benefits those receiving the care, but also accrues benefits to the community at large. Vaccinations reduce the spread of infectious diseases in a community. Keeping residents healthy improves the workforce and economy. Having a primary source of care reduces dependence on hospital emergency room visits at considerable cost savings.

Shelter services: in fy22, a total of 44,120 nights of shelter were provided to 785 unduplicated individuals throughout the year. Each day, approximately 150 people were provided safe and warm shelter at pacific and safe harbor shelters. These numbers reflect operations during covid. Post-covid, we expect to return to serving over 185 people each day in our shelter programs. Shelter residents receive three hot nutritious meals every day, hot showers, hygiene supplies, intensive case management, housing location assistance, resource and benefits connection, access to community services, transportation, employment referral, as well as financial education/services, and counseling. We also offer on-site medical respite, mental health and substance abuse support and intervention, educational programming, and other supportive services, as needed.through project roomkey and project homekey, the county selected Samaritan House to lead shelter expansion in san mateo county. In addition to the pacific emergency shelter, we opened and operated bayfront station, an off-site temporary shelter program (otsp), coastside shelter (interim), winter 2021 otsp, and 2022's isolation hotel shelter, sheltering 1,700 unhoused, medically vulnerable individuals and protecting them from covid-19.

Homelessness prevention services: homelessness prevention services target families in crisis and at imminent risk of becoming homeless. The program provides rental and deposit assistance, utility assistance, transportation and other critical needs in order for families to stabilize their housing situation. As lead core service agency for the county, we are responsible for the procurement and processing of all financial assistance for the region's network of seven core service agencies. In fy22, we distributed over $3.75m in covid and non-covid related financial assistance, including utilities and emergency rental assistance, from all funding sources, including the emergency rental assistance program, the cares fund, covid smc strong fund, and the svcf covid-19 regional response fund. Additionally, as the state's covid-19 rent relief program partner, we supported the delivery of more than $115m in financial relief to keep people in their homes during covid-19. Samaritan House is the county's contracted efa administrative entity, and we served a total of 2,668 households who were at risk of homelessness, providing an average of $3,802 in financial assistance per household. As san mateo county's lead social service agency, we served 881 immigrant families with application support and core services follow-up through partnership with the $16m san mateo county immigrant relief fund.

Coordinated entry system:samaritan House serves as the lead agency for san mateo county's coordinated entry system (ces) and has diversion specialists out stationed at each core agency office to provide immediate access to diversion service housing resources, and if necessary, shelter resources. In fy22, ces served 2,604 individuals countywide. The program leverages unhoused clients' resources and resiliency to secure housing arrangements with a shelter placement as the last resort. This strategy prevents homelessness for people seeking shelter by helping them identify immediate alternate housing arrangements and, if necessary, connect them with services and financial assistance to help them return to permanent housing. Ces has allowed for a more streamlined intake and referral process to ensure that the most vulnerable, medically fragile, chronically unhoused seniors, individuals, and families have priority placement in one of san mateo county's eight shelters and receive the intensive case management and support services they need.

Worker resource center:the worker resource center (wrc) matches temporary laborers with potential employers. Managed by Samaritan House and funded by the city of san mateo, the wrc opened in 2003 with the goal of providing a safe place for employers and employees to meet. In fy22, 451 clients were matched to 4,995 jobs. Additionally, we provide esl classes, computer learning, community engagement, training on basic maintenance and landscape services, employment services and referrals. During covid, the wrc became the rallying point for the day labor community. To meet the surge in need, the wrc model pivoted from a day labor site to a social services agency, addressing food insecurity, medical fragility, housing stability, and financial security. For those individuals self-isolating due to exposure or infection, food was personally delivered to their homes, ppe was distributed, and covid-19 vaccine flyers were posted across town. Over 700 families were registered for the mission asset fund immigrant relief fund, and in partnership with the county, two wrc pop-up covid-19 vaccine clinics were held.