Vacaville launches pilot program blending street cleanup with homeless work experience - Vacaville Reporter

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A program aimed at providing job skill opportunities for unhoused individuals while also beautifying city streets has finally made its way into Vacaville in the form of a pilot program called Vacaville Clean Streets, which launched Tuesday.

Vacaville Clean Streets is an offshoot of Downtown Streets, a San Jose-based nonprofit that operates in several Northern California communities and provides a structured work program for the homeless. The program allows participants to receive coaching, mentoring and even the ability to perform citywide beautification tasks, such as cleaning up graffiti or picking up litter, receiving a gift card for their work at the end of the week.

Vice Mayor Nolan Sullivan has been trying to bring such a program to Vacaville, as he has seen the Downtown Streets program in person in West Sacramento, where he works as a service centers branch director for Yolo County’s Health & Human Services Agency.

“West Sacramento, in particular, has done some really unique things to assist their homeless but also assist the city and the residents,” he said. “We’ve been trying to bring something like this to Vacaville for the last few years.”

Back in 2019, Sullivan led a team of city staff, faith-based leaders and members of the Vacaville Police Department’s Community Response Unit (CRU) to see the program in person in West Sacramento. He said the program was positively received by members of the Homeless Roundtable, a Vacaville committee of city officials as well as faith-based and nonprofit leaders to discuss issues related to homelessness.

“(They) really believed in the program and wanted to start kind of a mini pilot, Vacaville-style, and see how it goes,” he said. “I’m very excited to see what happens.”

Among those who attended the West Sacramento trip was Raleigh Galgan, a Homeless Roundtable member and pastor emeritus of Valley Church, where he also serves as a volunteer navigator with There’s a Better Way. Galgan said that while the city was not ready to launch Clean Streets right away, an opportunity came up when the city opened a warming shelter at Georgie Duke Sports Center.

“We had people that were wanting to do it,” he said.

Galgan said the pilot program is currently entirely funded through private donations, although he hopes to see it financed through grants.

“There’s no expense from the city,” he said.

The program meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the work designated for downtown. The participants consist of homeless Vacaville residents referred by CRU or Vacaville Solano Services Corporation, and the program will initially be maxed out at five participants. They will be led by a team of volunteers whom Sullivan said were veterans and Caltrans-certified.

Galgan said the participants would be picking up trash in Andrews Park and along Main Street and loading them into trash bags, which would in turn be loaded into vehicles. The days will end at 12:30 p.m. at Church of the Epiphany, where a soup kitchen will be open for participants to pick up hot meals.

At the end of the week, Galgan said the participants will receive a stipend in the form of two $10 gift cards to purchase food at WinCo, although he said they would be restricted from buying alcohol or tobacco products.

Galgan also said they would eventually receive a $25 gift card for the Opportunity House Thrift Store. Participants will also receive social services and employment mentoring along the way.

The pilot program is currently slated to run through the end of March, Galgan said.

“That’s what we have funding for right now,” he said. “(After that), our team will assess it and see if we can either get more donations or get some grant money for the program.”

Galgan said there was already a lot of enthusiasm for the program.

“I’ve got young adults here that were told to show up (and) they showed up early,” he said. “That says a lot. I thought I would have to go recruit them, but it showed that they’re willing to take the responsibility.”

Sullivan said that while a lot of homeless services programs are centered around simply getting unhoused individuals jobs, many of them have been without a home for years or have struggled with mental health or substance abuse issues and have been unable to transition directly back into a career. A program like Downtown Streets, he said, would give them the tools necessary to make that transition easier.

“It’s really hard to all of a sudden go from living under the bridge, coping with all those problems that come with being homeless, to the next day throwing on a uniform and going back to work,” he said. “This program is kind of a bridge where it’s kind of like pre-employment. You get people ready for the routine of going back to work. You build up their self-confidence and self-esteem, you give them basic training skills, you start to integrate them back into the structure of waking up every day and going to work (and) earning a paycheck.”

With the added benefit of keeping Vacaville’s downtown streets clean, Sullivan said it was a “win-win” situation for the community and the homeless population.

Galgan also said the program would put its participants on a path to permanent housing and allow them to develop a further relationship with the city.

“We build trust with them, and then they come to us when they’re ready to get off the street,” he said.

Additionally, Galgan said participants will receive different-colored T-shirts as they move through the program. They will start with yellow shirts, move up to green shirts where they serve as team leads, promoted to blue shirts if they exceed their responsibilities and are now tasked with leading entire projects and a black shirt, where they serve as operations supervisors.

“As they stay with the program and are reliable and accountable, they will graduate to a different color,” he said. “It creates pride in the program and a sense of accomplishment more than just getting a gift card. It showed that, ‘Hey, I stuck with this program,’ and eventually they will rise to what we call supervisors. They will oversee others.”

Sullivan said he was glad to see such a program in Vacaville, even on a trial basis.

“I hope it will have some good reactions from the public, and I hope at the end of the day, it will be something that we can turn from a four-to-six-week pilot into a more permanent program,” he said.

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Vacaville launches pilot program blending street cleanup with homeless work experience - Vacaville Reporter
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