This story about students experiencing homelessness was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

On a Friday evening in the fall of 2019, Maria Flores stood waiting with her “crazy heavy” duffel bag and her teenage son outside the office of a man whose home she cleaned.

After being evicted, “every single day I was looking for a place to live”, Flores said.

The man had offered two air mattresses, keys to his office, and permission to sleep there on weekends. But on this Friday, someone was working late. If Flores and her son went to a motel, they’d have no money for food, but she didn’t want to go to a shelter.

“Everything that I heard [about shelters], it was something about drugs, it was something about people being in a quarrel,” said Flores, who asked to use one of her two surnames to protect her privacy.

When Maria Flores was looking for shelter for her and her son, the Stay Over program at Buena Vista Horace Mann school in San Francisco was the answer. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Courtesy the Hechinger Report

There was one other option. A few months earlier, she’d heard about a family shelter inside an elementary school gym. Every evening, after the students and teachers left, partitions were snugged to the back wall, creating three-sided squares for kids and caregivers to set sleeping pads on the floor. Cafeteria-style tables in a connected room hosted dinner and, later, homework. Only families with a child enrolled in San Francisco Unified School District could be admitted. Flores’s son, who asked to go by Mateo, his middle name, was a high school junior at the time.

“I didn’t want to,” Flores said of calling the shelter that Friday night, “but I was so tired.” Standing on the sidewalk in a neighborhood known for open-air drug dealing, with the sky growing darker, she decided she and Mateo didn’t have a better option. She took out her phone.

A shelter in a school: ‘We were the folks willing to do it’

The idea of optimizing school district property for evening and weekend use isn’t new, but Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community school (BVHM, for short) appears to be the first modern public elementary school to have hosted a long-term, overnight family shelter.

“As far as our knowledge in the entire country, we are the first people to do it,” said Hillary Ronen, San Francisco city supervisor, who was instrumental in advocating for the program.

Some objected: shelter should not be the responsibility of a school, they argued.

And yet, “we were the folks that were willing to do it”, said Nick Chandler, the BVHM community school coordinator.

In the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, three blocks from the exclusive Adda Clevenger school and across the street from a restaurant serving a $16 roasted octopus appetizer, BVHM serves approximately 600 students. Just under 60% of them are English language learners, and just over 60% have been deemed socioeconomically disadvantaged. Many of the families are also undocumented or under-documented, according to the school’s staff.

Claudia DeLarios Morán, the principal at BVHM, stands with Jacqui Portillo, the Stay Over program director from from Dolores Street Community Services. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Courtesy the Hechinger Report

One night in 2017, a desperate parent talking to Chandler in the front lobby asked: “Can we stay here?”

The answer that night was no, but the question hung in the air. The school’s wellness team had noticed more and more families in crisis. They’d try to make referrals to the city and nonprofits, but said often nothing would come of it. Sometimes the waitlists were too long and sometimes it wasn’t clear what list a family should even be on.

“The process is so intense and it requires so much documentation and follow-through and systemic understanding,” said Claudia DeLarios Morán, the principal at BVHM. “So, it was a frustrated group of social workers and counselors and teachers saying, ‘What happened to this child?’”

BVHM’s staff had been trained in trauma-informed care, but they wanted to help kids not just to overcome, but to avoid altogether the experience of sleeping in a car, living in an overcrowded apartment, or having a parent stay in an abusive relationship to keep a roof over their heads. They knew housing families in the gym wouldn’t solve everything, but maybe it would solve something.

This is a Band-Aid. This is not a root-cause fix of the problem of childhood homelessnessHillary Ronen

“This is a Band-Aid,” said Ronen. “This is not a root-cause fix of the problem of childhood homelessness in this country.”

A vocal minority worried that a shelter would draw an unsavory crowd to the neighborhood, that the gym would be left smelling like urine, the playground littered with needles and cigarette butts.

To address these concerns, school administrators created an online FAQ document using questions submitted during and after in-person meetings.

“How will the administration guarantee … that no drugs, alcohol, or weapons will come on to the premises?”

“Will people with a criminal record … [or] mental illness be allowed to sleep in our school?”

Much of the pushback centered around, “Why us?”

For DeLarios Morán, a different question loomed: “How could we not?” the principal asked. “We have the space that’s not being used at night, a warm, dry, big enough space that would allow service, but it’s also a space that’s known and trusted by students.”

Two photos are paired together. In the photo at left, a girl is dragging a sleeping bag through a storage room filled with tables and upturned chairs at a school. In the photo at right, a child’s bear and backpack sit next to a plastic bag filled with clothes on a shelf in the gym.

The idea that schools can act as resource hubs for students and their families is known broadly as “community schooling” and has proven successful in schools across the country.

“A vast body of research shows that schools and communities can mitigate the effects of poverty by providing support to children and families to address basic needs such as housing instability,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California.

Students experiencing homelessness are more likely to display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression – even behaviors that look like ADHD, according to a report by the Learning Policy Institute.

Students without a safe and reliable place to sleep at night are more likely to be referred for discipline, including suspension. They are more likely to attend schools with concentrated poverty, and they score significantly lower on state testing than other economically disadvantaged students. Students experiencing homelessness are also less likely to graduate high school and less likely to attend college. They are more likely to change schools and be chronically absent.

“For English language learners experiencing homelessness,” the report concludes, “fewer than 9% met or achieved state standards in mathematics.”

A 2020 report from UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, funded in part by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, found that several indicators of educational distress – including suspensions and absenteeism rates – are, on average, worse for Black, American Indian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial students experiencing homelessness. Thanks to a racial knowledge gap in the data, it’s unclear whether that pattern extends to Latino students, said UCLA’s Edwin Rivera, co-author of the 2020 study.

Maribel Chávez, a first-grade teacher at BVHM, noticed an improvement in one of her students after starting the Stay Over program. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Courtesy the Hechinger Report

Maribel Chávez, a first-grade teacher at BVHM, said that before one of her students started sleeping in the gym, he usually arrived late to her class and with no breakfast in his stomach. He would routinely miss the class’s opening song and the preview of the day’s schedule. She’d try to give him a quick recap and “scrounge up some snack”, but it wasn’t enough. He threw objects, tried to leave the classroom, and hit other students.

After the boy landed in the Stay Over program, with its 9 pm lights-out policy and easy access to the school’s before-care program, his teacher said, the 6-year-old had breakfast every morning and she found him “in my line and ready to go”.

Chávez noticed a shift in his demeanor (“happier”) and behavior (“so much calmer”). And soon the benefit of small group instruction and literacy interventions kicked in.

“The other day we were reading together,” Chávez said, “and I was like, ‘Wait! Wait. Wait. Did you just read that?’”

More than just a temporary home: ‘We had community’

A joint use agreement allows a Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing program to be operated on school district property by Dolores Street Community Services, an independent nonprofit. The city foots the bill.

Nationally, public schools are required to offer a handful of services to students who are experiencing homelessness by federal legislation known as the McKinney-Vento Act, after two US congressmen who championed the legislation. But the funding that comes with the mandates has long been grossly inadequate and cannot be used for housing.

We have the space that’s not being used at night, a warm, dry, big enough space that would allow service, but it’s also a space that’s known and trusted by studentsClaudia DeLarios Morán

That said, other federal funding streams are available to support a district-city partnership like this one, including money from Fema and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. State dollars are often at hand. And in San Francisco, a business tax passed in 2018, a 2020 health and recovery bond, and private donations together provide hundreds of millions more.

Ronen, the city supervisor, said other prerequisites for a Stay Over program include having a principal and staff who aren’t scared of innovation, maintain a problem-solving mindset, and see basic needs as part of their mission. But none of that is specific to BVHM, she said.

There’s a caveat for others wishing to replicate the program though: “It should only happen if that is what your community is asking for,” Ronen said, “If this was top down, if I have this idea and impose it upon the school and the school district, it would not have worked. But is San Francisco a unicorn? I don’t think so.”

DeLarios Morán was more bullish: “They just have to follow the blueprint,” she said. “We’ve done it now. So, it’s not like they have to create the wheel.”

The Stay Over program has several features that make it especially appealing to families with school age children. There is no limit on the number of nights families can stay, absence for a night or two doesn’t result in removal, and families can reserve spots rather than needing to line up for first-come, first-served entry each night.

These policies might be responsible for the program’s unusual continuity. A January 2020 evaluation by the San Francisco controller’s office found that families stayed a median of 20 days, more than six times longer than those at San Francisco’s most comparable shelter. But it could be the site. Of the families surveyed by the evaluators, 79% said it was “very important” to be able to stay somewhere familiar, like their child’s school or another school in the district.

The Stay Over program allows families with school age children stay as many nights as they need. Photograph: Gail Cornwall/Courtesy the Hechinger Report

One of the program’s core components is to do more than offer temporary shelter. Walking through the door brings with it entry into a robust case management system. When she first arrived at BVHM in fall 2019, Flores wanted nothing to do with attempts to find new lodgings – she thought she’d just be shuffled to another shelter. But she appreciated having a reliable place to stay. Her headaches started to subside. She was sleeping again.

“We were making jokes,” she said, “We had that community.”

In some ways, it felt like a home. But it wasn’t, and eventually Flores welcomed case management help from Jacqui Portillo, the program director from Dolores Street Community Services.

“The way she talks,” Flores said, “that’s what convinced me that I can trust her. Jacqui is like an angel for me.”

A trained nurse in El Salvador, Portillo came to America with her three children and had little money after separating from her husband. They stayed, for years, in one half of a garage. For newcomer families especially, Portillo offers empathy, not sympathy. And empathy is what fuels her determination to make the program’s small budget stretch as far as possible.

Soon after Flores agreed to accept Portillo’s help, she was placed in a residential shelter with a private room for her and Mateo. It wasn’t what she’d envisioned. “When I saw the room, it was like what’s in the military,” she said. “A small room, and it has – what do you call it? – bunk beds.”

Maria Flores eventually welcomed help from Jacqui Portillo, the director of the Stay Over program, who eventually got an apartment for her and her son, Mateo. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Courtesy the Hechinger Report

Disappointed, she sat down and cried. So did Mateo. “I felt like I was so abandoned,” Flores said.

She had kept all her meetings, done everything right, and still had so much further to go to reclaim the type of home she’d had prior to being evicted.

Flores’ experience is a reminder that the stability and community offered by the school-based shelter is temporary. The path to stable housing is as long and frustrating for each individual family as the pursuit of eliminating homelessness has been for San Francisco and the nation.

“We will not fix homelessness until the federal government believes that housing is a human right,” said Ronen, the city supervisor. “Hopefully we will not need [a program like] this in the future, but right now we do.”

Flores and Mateo hadn’t been abandoned, though. They continued to get help from caseworkers and moved into a subsidized studio apartment in November. There are no more creaky bunk beds. They have a bathroom they can access any time and showers without a time limit. They got boxes out of storage. “I have my furniture,” Flores said, “my vacuum!”

Mateo is getting the sleep he needs to focus on his classes at the City College of San Francisco: math, English, and criminal investigation. But he still doesn’t have his own room, and Flores said they won’t stay here permanently.

“It’s another stop,” she said. “We are getting closer.”

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James Keys hasn’t moved far from the spot on the street where, several months ago, he was living inside his 40-foot RV. In fact, that vehicle is still his home, and the south end of Bayview-Hunters Point is still his neighborhood.

On the street last year, Keys had to bury his waste, with no access to a bathroom or shower. Now, at the city site, he can use portable toilet, a shower trailer, two microwaves and a charging station for electronics. He gets two hot meals every day, and as of last week the city planned to send in more services, including case managers who can help place him into more permanent housing.

“It’s way better,” Keys told The Chronicle as he walked through the sanctioned parking site last week. “I’m giving them an A-plus.”

James Keys look out from his parked RV at the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center in San Francisco, California Thursday, March 3, 2022. Keys, 59, who previously lived in his RV with his brother and girlfriend along Hunters Point Expressway and subsequently at a temporary city-run RV site on Carroll Avenue after the atmospheric river event in November flooded much of the Expressway, initially resisted the move from the Carroll site but has since come around in support of the Triage Center and its support services despite being unable to use generators and open flames for warmth and cooking.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

Officials say about 50 households are living at San Francisco’s Bayview Vehicle Triage Center, the name for the sanctioned Candlestick Point parking site the city set up to address the growing ranks of people living inside RVs or cars. The site, operated by the nonprofit Urban Alchemy, is expected to grow to accommodate 130 households in the coming months.

San Francisco opened the Candlestick Point site in January and simultaneously shut down a nearby lot on Carroll Avenue where the city had let people living inside RVs set up temporarily. Officials had opened the Carroll lot as a short-term emergency location last year after a rainstorm led to flooding along Hunters Point Expressway, causing extensive damage to some of the vehicles parked there.

The city’s closure of the Carroll lot was met with strong resistance by some of its residents. They were deeply skeptical of the new Candlestick Point site, pointing to its limited electricity and rules banning propane tanks and generators, among other issues.

Propane tanks and generators remain disabled at the vehicle triage center. But Emily Cohen, a deputy director with the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the city is working to get electric utility service connected to the RVs.

RVs are seen parked inside Bayview Vehicle Triage Center at Candlestick Point State Recreation Area in San Francisco, California Thursday, March 3, 2022.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

“We want this to be better than being out on the street,” Cohen said. “This is hopefully a step on the pathway to people’s place somewhere more permanent.”

The site serves only a small portion of San Francisco’s vehicle dwellers. As of November, the city had tallied about 1,000 inhabited vehicles, with the largest concentration — about half of the total — residing in supervisory District 10, which includes Bayview-Hunters Point.

And as the city tried to set up the sanctioned parking site at Candlestick Point, it encountered opposition from residents concerned that it was trying to warehouse homeless people in one area. A local neighborhood group filed a lawsuit challenging the parking site and is now in settlement talks with the city.

Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton, who represents District 10, said he’s been talking to constituents to hear their feedback about the Candlestick Point site and the number of inhabited vehicles in the area.

RVs are seen parked inside Bayview Vehicle Triage Center at Candlestick Point State Recreation Area in San Francisco, California Thursday, March 3, 2022.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

“Everyone was happy about changes to the expressway,” Walton said, referring to a lack of people parked on the street near the vehicle triage center. “There are still some concerns about folks who live in vehicles, but it’s not the same (level of) concern we saw a few months ago.”

Still, complaints from some neighbors persist. Timothy Alan Simon, who lives near the parking site, said its “extremely bright” nighttime lights have been a nuisance and inhabited RVs still populate many blocks in the area.

“The focus, understandably, is on the unhoused, but there seems to be no consideration for residents,” Simon said. “Based on our observation, the vehicle triage center has done nothing to reduce the unhoused RV population in the neighborhood streets themselves.”

The Candlestick Point site will be operational for at least two years, and San Francisco is looking into opening a second location for people who live in their vehicles.

Not everyone living at the current site is intent on staying. Marissa Magnusen, 50, told The Chronicle last week that she was considering leaving and finding somewhere else to park her RV while she tries to get into permanent housing.

“I don’t really like being told what to do all the time,” Magnusen said. “(But) it’s a nice program, I guess — for some people.”

JD Morris is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @thejdmorris

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF / AP) – Foiled by a federal court backlash, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered staff to use Texas’s successful legal arguments in the Supreme Court to defend its ban on abortion to draft law that it would prohibit possession of assault weapons in California.

In a statement released Saturday night, Newsom expressed outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision on the Texas case.

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“I am outraged by yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling allowing the ban on most abortion services in Texas to be upheld, and I broadly support Texas’s plan to amend its Roe v. Basic Protection Act. Isolate Wade, ”he said. “But if states can now protect their laws from scrutiny by federal courts that liken assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives while Texas has used them to put women at risk. “

“I have directed my associates to work with the Legislature and Attorney General on a bill that will create a right of action that allows individuals to seek injunctive relief and legal damages of at least $ 10,000 per violation, plus costs and attorney’s fees assert anyone. ”Who manufactures, distributes or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts thereof in the US state of California. If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, that’s exactly what we should be doing. “

California has banned the manufacture and sale of many assault weapons for decades. A federal judge lifted the ban in June, ruling it unconstitutional and drew the wrath of the state’s democratic leaders by comparing the popular AR-15 rifle to a Swiss Army knife as “good for home and combat”.

The state ban remained in place while the verdict is being appealed.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in Texas passed law earlier this year banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which usually occurs about six weeks after pregnancy. Texas law allows private individuals to enforce the ban and gives them the power to sue abortion clinics and anyone else who “helps and assists” with the process.

On Friday, the US Supreme Court allowed Texas law to remain in effect while abortion clinics block it.

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The Texas Abortion Act litigation has centered on its unusual structure and whether it inappropriately limits the ability to challenge the law in court. Texan lawmakers left responsibility for enforcing the law to private individuals, not state officials.

The case raised a complex set of questions about who, if any, can sue in federal court, the typical avenue for contesting abortion restrictions.

Newsom’s gun proposal would have to pass California lawmakers before it could become law. The legislature is currently not in session and is due to meet again in January. It usually takes around eight months for new bills to pass through lawmakers, unless there are special circumstances.

Senator Brian Dahle, a Republican from Bieber, would oppose the plan but predicted it could likely pass California’s Democrat-dominated legislature. He said the proposal was most likely a stunt for Newsom to attract its progressive electorate ahead of a possible future presidential run.

“The right to bear arms is different from the right to have an abortion. The right to abortion is not a constitutional change. So I think he’s far from the base, ”said Dahle. “I think he’s just using it as an opportunity to be in the stands.”

But Newsom’s Saturday night statement is a fulfilled prophecy for some gun rights groups who had predicted that progressive states would try to use Texas’ abortion law to restrict access to guns. Because of this, the Firearms Policy Coalition, a nonprofit group that campaigns for gun rights, has filed a lawsuit against Texas law in the US Supreme Court.

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“If Texas is successful in its move here, New York, California, New Jersey and others will not be far behind making equally aggressive moves to not only deter but to freeze the right to keep and carry weapons,” Lawyer Erik Jaffe wrote on behalf of the Arms Policy Coalition.

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