Our homelessness crisis is intrinsically tied to our society’s deep racial inequities, which is why our work at Destination: Home is grounded in a commitment to racial equity. In an effort to advance racial justice locally and ensure people with firsthand insight into the experience of homelessness are at the forefront of solutions to homelessness, we created the Andre Ellison Equity Fund. Today, we are celebrating a new group of organizations we’re partnering with through the fund.
Named in memory of our friend and colleague, Andre Ellison, the fund intends to support organizations led by people of color and/or people with lived experience of homelessness – organizations that have historically been underfunded – by providing our partners with unrestricted and flexible funding to increase their capacity and support their efforts to end and prevent homelessness.
By empowering those most impacted by the homelessness crisis and centering lived experience, we’re working toward building a more equitable supportive housing system to advance the strategies in the Community Plan to End Homelessness.
Growing Partnerships
Based on the initial success of the fund, Destination: Home is excited to kick off 2024 with four new Andre Allison Equity Fund partnerships:
The Karat School Project helps local underserved communities overcome intergenerational poverty – including families that are unhoused and living in their RVs – by providing resources and services such as advocacy, educational enrichment activities and access to basic needs.
Madre-A-Madre is on a mission to empower Spanish-speaking women in the Washington/Guadalupe community of San Jose – which has long suffered from unjust racial profiling and systemic racism – to transform their families and communities. This funding opportunity will enable Madre-A-Madre to hire and train new staff to develop place-based homelessness prevention and intervention programs.
The South Bay Community Land Trust seeks to create and expand community control of land to provide permanent affordable housing and promote neighborhood stability and community involvement to preserve the quality of life for residents in Santa Clara County.
Sunday Friends Foundation is a Latina-led nonprofit that helps individuals and families break the generational cycle of poverty and prevent homelessness by providing a variety of poverty alleviation and education services as well as essential resources to support their stability and upward mobility.
We’re committing a total of $1.2 million to these new partners and looking forward to sharing the ongoing impact of this deep collaboration. To end and prevent homelessness in our community, those with lived experience must be centered in the solutions.
Growing Impact
The first seven Andre Ellison Equity Fund partner organizations are growing tremendously and doing outstanding work to end and prevent homelessness in the community. Here’s just a sample of the impact our partners are making.
Silicon Valley African American Cultural Center is continuing to make progress on their affordable housing development and community hub, recently getting a $3 million funding boost from the 2023 State Budget for local programs secured by state Senator Dave Cortese. The project is expected to break ground next year and is designed to include a cultural center, health clinic and permanent supportive housing.
Asian American Center of Santa Clara County is expanding their community outreach efforts through media to engage with a wider audience and address more diverse community needs. Through an investment in advanced tools and technology, they are also streamlining processes and operating more efficiently, laying a strong foundation for sustainable organizational growth.
Carry the Vision is scaling their services to reach and serve new communities like promotora groups in Gilroy and Mountain View and the youth workforce. The increase in capacity has also helped the organization secure government funds from the Santa Clara County Public Health Department to support their work in highly impacted census tracts.
Elevate Community Center has been able to more than double the number of clients served with financial and legal services in Vietnamese and Spanish, increasing their ability to serve historically marginalized communities.
Latinas Contra Cancer continues to increase their team’s capacity, recently bringing a Director of Programs and Impact on board. The organization also just launched a patient rights campaign facilitated by their organizing committee comprised of individuals with lived experience.
Latinos United for a New America is addressing the displacement of low income families at risk of homelessness by expanding their capacity and organizing efforts to serve new neighborhoods, including establishing a new Gramercy/ Alexander neighborhood association to inform and educate tenants on their rights to prevent displacement as they face rent increases and other issues.
Razing the Bar has tripled the number of homeless youth served and supported by people with lived experience of homelessness, and continues to demonstrate what it means to lead with lived experience through its peer-to-peer support model.
We’re thrilled to see partners continue to grow and increase their efforts to end and prevent homelessness and will continue to share the collective impact along the way.
