Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Dinnertime: Larry Harris, left, serves dinner to InnVision employee Jan Bernstein at the nightly dinner gathering held at the Stone Church auditorium. While the InnVision program is for men, volunteers occasionally join them for dinner.
Giving shelter: Local church offers a home to the homeless
InnVision's program helps homeless get back on their feet
By Kate Carter
C.J. LaMee is 21 years old and works 62 to 72 hours a week filling gumball and candy machines all over the Bay Area. His father lives in Mountain View and his mother lives in Los Angeles. But he doesn't have a place to live. He is homeless.
"When I first got to Mountain View, my dad was gracious enough to let me stay for 24 hours," LaMee said.
Right now, though, he is being hosted at Willow Glen's Stone Church, along with 14 other employed men, as part of InnVision's Community Inns Program.
InnVision is a 27-year-old Willow Glen nonprofit organization dedicated to helping homeless individuals and families get back on their feet.
The Community Inns program is just one of InnVision's four emergency housing programs, and one of 11 InnVision programs designed to help reduce homelessness throughout Santa Clara County.
Jan Bernstein Chargin, communications director for InnVision, says InnVision has responded to the changes in the homeless population over the past four decades. When the nonprofit first opened in 1973, most of the homeless people were men with mental illnesses. The 1980s saw an increase in homelessness in general, and was followed by an explosion of homeless women and children in the early 1990s, she said. Now, many of the homeless people that InnVision serves are employed.
"A lot of people are employed but at such low incomes, they can't afford to pay the rent," Chargin said.
That is the population that the Community Inns program is designed to assist.
The program began in 1992, when the local Council of Churches, a cross-denominational group of churches and synagogues across the county, approached InnVision to begin a rotating shelter for homeless men who could benefit from community interaction and support.
Twelve churches and synagogues throughout the county, including two in Willow Glen, host the 15 homeless participants for one month out of the year. They serve as a home base for the men who work during the day and return in the evenings for a meal provided by volunteers from other local congregations.
On Oct. 9, the meal was barbecued chicken, rice, corn and cake provided by the Donato family from First Covenant Church in Willow Glen.
Barb and Steve Donato and their five children, Jamison, Cortney, Alysson, Taylor and McKenzie, provided the meal with financial help from another church family. They also shared the meal and talked with the nine men, who were mostly in their 20s and 30s.
Barb Donato says that she found out about the program through a Bible study group at the church. When she saw that the meal sign-up list was still empty only a week and a half earlier, she decided that her family could help out.
"I've always wanted to do it, but we didn't seem to have the time," Donato says. "But I thought, we can make it work. Let's just do it."
She says the family chose Monday night to serve because that's the one night in the week when her brood, ranging in ages from 6 to 18 years, is all together. "We always want to help people," she says. "We've got to make dinner, anyway."
The men who partake of the food and companionship from the members of the community are carefully screened by InnVision's case managers. The program's night supervisor, Larry Harris, says that he meets with the men to make sure that they are not on parole or probation, that they have not been convicted of sexual offenses, and that they are employed or actively seeking employment. Harris says he also looks for an eagerness and motivation in potential program participants. Then he and the program director meet together with the client before admitting him to the program.
"Certain clients wouldn't work here," he says. "I'd like to see this program for everybody, but not everybody is suited for it."
The program is specifically geared for the needs of men who want to improve their lives and are ready to commit to spending three months in the rotating shelter and then another seven months in a transitional housing program. This gives them time to become stable, concentrate on work and save money for a rent deposit while waiting for affordable housing to open up. Each client works to develop his own goals and plans to become self-sufficient.
Harris says that by taking on those who are ready to make these steps, the program frees up other case managers to work with clients who aren't quite ready for such a hands-off program.
"We have a great team, including the client," Harris says. "The client carries the ball; we're there to encourage him to run with it."
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Helping Hands: The Donato family prepares dinner for the men in the InnVision program, currently being held for the month of October at Stone Church. The Donatos are members of First Covenant, another local church, which is catering food to the program for the week.
Tommy Alejandro is a program participant who works in a sheet metal warehouse and hopes to move up in the company.
"This is the first time I've been in this situation," he says of his homelessness.
He says he lost his full-time job because he was abusing alcohol and drugs. He was working part-time jobs but couldn't pay the rent. Finally, he found himself on the street, and then he found his way to InnVision and Community Inns, where he's made some changes in his life and found confidence in himself, he says.
"There's a better future out there--clean and sober," Alejandro says. "I want to get right, I want to go straight."
Harris says that sometimes clients who relapse into their addictions are too ashamed to come back to the program.
"There's always someone who won't make 90 days," he says.
Harris says that they know that most recovering addicts won't kick their habits on their first try. He says that they never give up on any of their clients and always approach them with love and welcome when they see them again.
Harris should know: He was a client at InnVision and is also in recovery.
"I must have made some sort of impression; I wound up working for them," he says.
Harris began participating in InnVision's program after he was released from prison.
"I had to learn things the hard way," he says. "I'm teaching people now in order to avoid what I went through," he says.
Adrian Ramirez works in the same sheet metal warehouse as Alejandro, and says that he helped Alejandro get his job. He says that the community of men in his program are friends, and that has made a big difference to him.
"I didn't have any friends until I came here," he says.
He says his landlord sold the house he was living in, and he found out two days before he had to move out. He spent time moving from motel to motel, he says, and then started staying in homeless shelters. He got on the waiting list for the Community Inns program, and started in the program about two months ago.
"I was depressed," Ramirez says. "I was pretty close to giving up on life itself. I was thinking, why even bother trying? This program helps give you the bother, gives you hope. "
Communications director Chargin says that the stress and trauma of being homeless can be one of the biggest problems that InnVision tries to solve.
"By the time people come to the shelter, they have been through emotional chaos for months," she says "People are trying not to be homeless. People will try anything to get back on their feet first."
She tells stories of people who spend the night at all-night diners, or who ride the bus all night so they don't have sleep on the streets. And InnVision, though a large organization, cannot give shelter to everyone who needs it.
"There's a lack of space almost every night," she says. "You have to tell desperate people that we don't have room."
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Getting Ahead: C.J. LaMee, 21, has been with the program at InnVision for a little over three months. He dreams of going to culinary school, but says that he's been unable to find a way to go to school full-time and support himself.
InnVision provides more than just a roof over people's heads, Chargin says.
"We call the programs 'inns' because they're not just shelters," she says. "It is a complex system of support that gives people the tools they need to rebuild their lives."
The Community Inns program offers the clients access to computer labs and technological facilities at Cecil White Drop-In Center in downtown San Jose, including voice mail and email services. The men receive bus passes if they don't have their own transportation. They become members of Second Start, a program that helps them get money for clothes, work tools and other needs. They participate in classes where they learn résumé writing, receive motivational coaching and get job counseling. And they meet and talk together about their feelings, experiences and goals. Everything is designed to meet specific needs of the group targeted for help.
"I want to stay around people who are employed," program participant LaMee said. "You can't identify with people who haven't worked in 10 years."
LaMee says he wants to get his bachelor's degree in child development. But right now he has to work full time, to get back on his feet, he says.
Program supervisor Harris says one of the valuable aspects of the program is that it is located in the community.
"You get you back in touch with your setting," he says. "When all else is lost, you can always come home to the church. The community is the backbone of InnVision."
When InnVision first started planning the Community Inns program in 1991, they held meetings with the neighbors near the congregations that would host the program. Some of the neighbors express concerns about having a group of homeless men near their homes, including some in Willow Glen, said InnVision's Executive Director Christine Burroughs.
After a year of working with the city planning department on permits and ordinances, the program opened in 1992.
Since then, Burroughs says she has had no negative response from any residents.
"We haven't had any incidents," she says. "It's had zero impact on any neighborhood."
Chargin and Burroughs say they hope that as San Jose's residents meet real homeless people, they will be more willing to address the problems that cause homelessness.
"Now that we're dealing with affordable housing issues, we're hoping that people will be more willing to invite affordable housing developments into their neighborhoods," Burroughs says. "We need more higher-density developments. San Jose residents are still fighting that."
It's important that people without homes realize that people do care about their plight, Chargin says. That's what the Community Inns program does.
"The men felt like nobody cared," she says "And then, they find out there is a caring community there. The men in that program feel a lot of self-worth, that they can make some positive changes in their lives."
As the holiday season approaches, InnVision staff hopes to receive donations from the public to provide gifts and to help clients make it through the cold and wet weather. They are looking for new and unwrapped toys for children and teens, and prepaid phone and gas cards and clothing gift certificates for adults, as well as toiletry items, frozen meat, and canned and dried food.
Harris says that he feels gratified by the work that he does and the difference he makes in the lives of people who need him.
"I love what I'm doing," he says. "There's no greater feeling than to see their eyes light up when they see there's a light at the end of the tunnel."
For more information about InnVision, visit www.innvision.org.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
