Global Shapers and ShelterTech Team Up to Improve Homelessness Resources
If you talk to someone who has experienced homelessness at any point in their lives, they might bring up how difficult it was to get help. Emmy*, an incoming college student who was formerly homeless as a youth, recalls, “I didn’t know where to go for food and shelter, even though I had my smartphone”. Although helpful resources are scattered all over the internet, people without shelter find it exceptionally difficult to access services that help them meet their everyday needs like healthcare and food.
To help bridge this large and obvious gap, ShelterTech has been collaborating with the SF Bar Association’s Homeless Advocacy Project to create AskDarcel.org, named after Darcel Jackson who had become homeless after losing his job working on the Bay Bridge. AskDarcel has one great vision — to serve the homeless community in San Francisco as the most robust housing and human services online directory available in the city. In order to best understand what resources are most helpful to people without shelter, ShelterTech hosts weekly events, known as Datathons, that partner volunteers with Community Representatives (CRs) to vet and add content to the AskDarcel directory. In appreciation of our CRs’ time and valuable insight, ShelterTech provides them a stipend for their participation at a Datathon. S*, a CR with ShelterTech since January, chooses to spend her stipend on rent and paying her WiFi bills. When asked what she uses the WiFi for, S* gleefully mentions reading online news and checking her email. Given her love for community engagement and current affairs, the stipend ShelterTech provides her helps S* stay technologically connected through paying her WiFi bills.
Last weekend, ShelterTech was delighted to host a special Datathon with Global Shapers at a WeWork office in Downtown San Francisco. Global Shapers are a huge and diverse group of young people across the world driving dialogue, action and change. Through harnessing the power of youth in action at multiple ‘hubs’ across major cities, Global Shapers have innovated creative ways to solve the economic, human rights and environmental issues of today. In fact, ShelterTech, now a non-profit 501(c)(3), was co-founded by a San Francisco Shaper. This particular Datathon brought things full-circle by partnering Global Shapers with our CRs, who have themselves experienced homelessness, to keep AskDarcel’s resources updated and relevant.
The event opened at 2:00PM with an introduction by ShelterTech staff volunteers Ivan and Bharathi, which highlighted the severity of San Francisco’s homelessness issue. Upon hearing that more than 8,000 San Franciscans every night are left without shelter, the room resonated with empathetic gasps from Global Shapers and CRs alike. Having San Francisco’s housing crisis put into statistics reminded everyone of the sheer scale of it all. How did we get here? Initially, public housing projects like the 118-unit Holly Courts built in 1940, thrived under the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA). However, policies in the 1960s that favored minimal government involvement led to a decrease in public housing funding. Despite calls in March 2019 for housing finance reform and the increased demand for homes here, housing in San Francisco is increasingly scarce, expensive, and unreachable to individuals with lower incomes.
AskDarcel’s goal as a directory is to heighten the awareness of existing services to people experiencing homelessness. We gather and guide individuals experiencing homelessness to a wide range of resources that address domestic violence, provide vocational training opportunities, as well as healthcare and food.
The Global Shapers vetted and published a total of 18 resources on Saturday alongside our CRs, across a wide range of categories dedicated to improving the welfare of vulnerable communities in the Bay Area. In particular, the Global Shapers helped vet and publish information about 4 community support groups, 5 healthcare and mental health services, 3 educational resources, 2 food programs, 1 suicide prevention hotline, and 1 legal self-advocacy service. Improvements were made by making service descriptions brief and easily comprehensible, inputting information into appropriate fields, and ensuring that contact information was accurate and updated.
Based on our CRs’ lived experiences of homelessness, the vetted resources benefited from their expert knowledge on community-specific words used to refer to certain resources and locations. Additionally, our initial vetting list provided directives on adding hours, contact information or descriptions to these resources, so that the Global Shapers could help make resources more accessible to people using AskDarcel.
Working with a CR can heighten one’s empathy toward the homeless issue, especially if one hasn’t had many opportunities to interact closely with people who have experienced homelessness. Ms. Cara, a Global Shaper and student at UC Berkeley, reflects that the most important part of this event was “being able to work with Emmy*, a CR, and learn about his personal experiences”. In the San Francisco Shapers’ mission to combat loneliness and organize concerts for people experiencing homelessness, it is often most valuable to listen and understand. Ms. Adelle, a volunteer, agrees that working closely with CRs “helps innovate something that (people experiencing homelessness) find useful instead of enforcing a solution upon them”. This aligns with the principles of human-centered design — only through knowing the needs and goals of our users, can ShelterTech and Global Shapers serve our surrounding communities best by developing solutions like AskDarcel.org.
The systemic housing crisis in San Francisco is severely impacting low-income communities. Mr. Asim Brooks, a formerly homeless individual who now lives in a Single-Room Occupancy (S.R.O.), recalls vividly that “getting out of poverty is a slow process” because he has a monthly income of $473 from the city and $318 of it goes to rent alone. He first became homeless in 2014 as a result of savings being depleted from taking care of his mentally-ill mother. Bearing in mind that low-income individuals often lack the financial and social support net that cushion others when unfortunate circumstances strike, it is all the more important for them to be guided to resources available to them.
In our mission to meet the needs of San Franciscans experiencing homelessness, ShelterTech and AskDarcel thrive on the kindness and support of our volunteers. If you’re interested in volunteering or have your organization partner with us in an upcoming Datathon, send us an email at info@sheltertech.org.
Finally, it takes a village to keep the lights on at ShelterTech. If you might be able to help us raise $500 to cover the costs of our next public Datathon, please donate here. Anything helps.
*Names omitted or changed to protect interviewees’ privacy.
