CITY HOPE SAN FRANCISCO

MISSION AND VISION
Because City Hope SF believes no one belongs on the streets, our mission is to build relationships, decrease isolation, and connect our vulnerable neighbors to community resources. By providing radical hospitality in beautiful, dignified places, we are uniquely positioned to welcome guests and build a community where they can envision their next steps toward health and stability.

City Hope serves the most marginalized in the Tenderloin, a low-income and racially diverse neighborhood. We serve vulnerable neighbors who are disabled, elderly, addicted and/or in recovery, low-income, and unhoused or marginally housed. We know that while Tenderloin resources are plentiful, access is complicated by health challenges, racial disparities, addiction, and other barriers. Through the City Hope Community Center, House, and Café, we invite these neighbors into our community and into trusted relationships, and from there we can connect them with those resources.

We expect to change the community’s perception of where vulnerable Tenderloin neighbors belong, starting with our neighbors themselves. Our guests are often surprised that our café is meant for them, and surprised again that service providers will meet with them in their own familiar surroundings. They learn that our sit-down, delicious meals are meant for them, and our volunteers learn to move easily between San Francisco’s starkly divided economic strata. As isolation abates, and connections are made, we believe our neighbors can move beyond tenuous existence and into a safe, sustainable life.

HISTORY
City Hope began as a program of a local church, reaching out to people facing incarceration, addiction, and housing challenges. As volunteers and staff learned about what was needed in San Francisco by listening and serving, the idea of creating a welcoming and beautiful space was born. Through community support the City Hope Community Center opened on Olive Street in the Tenderloin in 2015. In addition to serving meals and creating fun events for our guests, we also began delivering groceries through a partnership with the SF-Marin Food Bank.

While ramping up our early programs, the opportunity to take over a nearby SRO (single room occupancy) hotel arose. In 2016 we opened the City Hope House as a 2-year transitional program for residents who had completed a year of recovery. This is made possible through a generous property management investor who provides the building to us on a long-term basis.

When guests enter City Hope Community Center for the first time, they are often surprised that this room is meant for them. They experience the dignity of hearing their names spoken aloud at least 4 times during their visit, of choosing their meal from a menu of options, of lingering over coffee to watch a movie or play bingo or sing karaoke, and of knowing they are welcome to return again and again. Our Center is a beautifully renovated gathering place where volunteers and guests mingle freely, getting to know each other in an unhurried way while we serve house-made meals from our own commercial kitchen. We delight in our guests’ lives, celebrating their birthdays and other milestones, connecting them to this community where they matter. The relationships that build from these personal connections offer opportunities to support our guests with their path forward, whether it is toward sobriety, housing, reconciliation, medical care, or more.

Each Tuesday morning, an armada of grocery carts pushed by volunteers leaves the Community Center to deliver groceries to disabled elderly neighbors. Our long partnership with the SF-Marin Food Bank supports our reach to 95 households every week, and each delivery is a chance for a volunteer to connect with a person who is physically unable to access groceries easily. Volunteers know their routes, and often check in briefly with the neighbors, sometimes forging connections with other providers when they learn of neighbors’ needs.

City Hope House provides a supportive community where residents can pursue stable employment, family reconciliation, financial recovery, and permanent housing. Our residents have completed an addiction recovery program, but benefit from City Hope’s stable and encouraging housing and programs which support their sobriety and their steps back into life. During their 2 years, residents regularly volunteer at the Community Center and are integral members of the City Hope community.

GROWING NEIGHBORHOOD CONNECTIONS
2020 brought both unexpected challenges and opportunities to City Hope. COVID-related closures and health concerns challenged us to continue providing meals and building relationships with our most marginalized neighbors in the face of a raging pandemic, which required rapid adaptation of the Center for outdoor services and implementation of intense safety measures. Staff and volunteers pivoted quickly, and while to-go meals were a far cry from our deeply personalized approach, we created 3 meals a week for neighbors who lined up around the block. We took on additional grocery delivery routes for the food bank, and during the height of the pandemic actually increased our services.

This hard situation brought an even more profound opportunity to connect. While we never stopped serving, all the while that we were handing out to-go meals in our alley, we were longing to get back inside our center. But one evening the CEO and COO of a local community health center walked by the food line, peeked in the windows at our humming kitchen, and struck up a conversation with Paul Trudeau, City Hope’s Executive Director. They were already offering medical care, case management, and more to our very same neighbors - but had no hospitable space. We had space, but concentrated on attracting guests with hospitality and quality food, not providing direct services. On that night, a powerful partnership was born.

In 2021, through partnerships with that health center and other local nonprofits, we launched the City Hope Café. This former restaurant space in our building has been transformed into a lively hub of activity - City Hope Café opens its doors to our neighbors every weekday morning, when they can enjoy free lattes and baked goods in our coffee shop environment. We welcome people who are often unwelcome in traditional cafés, but who know that here they can linger, use our wifi, play a board game, or simply get out of the rain. Because our guests trust us and trust their surroundings, they can engage with other service providers who are on site to connect them with resources. Neighbors now have a place to find respite and connect with friends, an alternative to the hard streets - it’s a dinner party upstairs in our Center, and a quieter, inviting living room in the café.

BRINGING OUR WORLDS TOGETHER
While our immediate neighbors struggle to piece together life in the Tenderloin, this small district is surrounded by San Francisco’s immense wealth and privilege. Our mission - building relationships, decreasing isolation, and connecting our neighbors - extends to everyone, from guests to residents to volunteers. We have discovered that volunteers are as transformed as our guests, as they discover their shared humanity with people they might have overlooked in their daily lives. Armed with menus as scripts, and nametags as introductions, they start a meal by tentatively learning their guests’ names, move to comfortably serving meals, and end the evening singing karaoke to a room full of newly discovered neighbors - and those neighbors are singing right back to them.

We have nurtured partnerships with local churches, temples, and faith communities, who resonate with City Hope’s work as they seek to live out the tenets of their faith, even as we live out ours. We consistently host school groups, providing an introduction between students and this corner of their world, helping them become fluent in loving their neighbors. We connect corporations with the Tenderloin, forging ties between the forces that fuel our City’s economy and the people living on the edges of that presence. And we work hand-in-glove with our nonprofit partners, who learn the grace of unhurried service, unconditional love, and unmeasured acceptance, and who share their own resources in return.