Destination: Home

At age 10, Jennifer Loving would see people sleeping on the pews in her uncle's church, people without homes or possessions. From that young age, she wanted to do something about it.

"Then it was game over," Loving says. "I’ve been working in shelters and with the homeless ever since."

Loving is the executive director of Destination: Home, a small organization funded by the Campbell that is working with to find permanent homes for the chronically homeless within Santa Clara County.

From three days, from 4-6:30 a.m., late last month, volunteers from all over the country came together to survey the homeless population. This month, they wrapped things up in South County on July 20-21.

"I think the most amazing lesson I learned by the week was how willing folks were to say yes," Loving said in a thank-you letter to volunteers. "It was quite humbling, having all of you join us, open your hearts and minds, and help us get this work done. Truly impossible without it. And to give that human contact to folks most in need, while impossible to measure, can mean so much. Now we are left with a sense of urgency, to come together and begin to house those who need it most."

The surveying work was hard; it was dark, it rained, and the embankments and freeway underpasses were not for the faint of heart. Many individuals refused to talk to surveyors, but some did.

"I thought it was a great experience," says Rebecca Smith of Santa Cruz. She volunteered June 29 to survey the homeless in Campbell along the Los Gatos Creek Trail, behind the . "It's nice to meet others in the community that really do care about this. It was really enlightening and uplifting."

The Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey Reports were released this week, and in the county, homelessness dropped by 1 percent from 2009, with loss of employment the No. 1 reason for people becoming homeless.

"Right now, we’re not ending homelessness, we’re managing it," Loving says. "We want to shift from managing to ending homelessness."

The purpose behind Housing 1000 is to make a system-wide change, she says.

"We know we have a lot of inefficiencies within our systems, and that makes it hard for people," Loving says.

But before finding a way to house the county's 1,000 most at-risk homeless residents, volunteers set out to interview as many individuals as they could find and determine their needs.

Of the more than 943 people surveyed so far, more than 661 had behavioral health issues. Nearly 177 had suffered a brain injury, and 276 had a history of substance abuse. Of those surveyed, about 367 are deemed most vulnerable in the county.

These are issues that a small organization like Destination: Home could address, Loving says.

"Destination: Home is not to recreate other entities doing homeless work," she says. "We have chosen to stay small and nimble."  

As one of the many agencies in the county that have partnered in this project, Destination: Home hopes to accomplish the goal of housing 1,000 chronically homeless individuals in the county by 2013.

Now that the surveying is over, the organization will take a look at what kinds of resources, including financial support, it will need in order to place people in homes and provide the services they need.