KCBS In Depth: Challenges For Homeless Families Under San Francisco's High Cost Of Living
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — This week KCBS In Depth co-hosts Jane McMillan and Ed Cavagnaro speak with Erica Kisch, executive director of Compass Family Services—a San Francisco non-profit that assists homeless and at-risk families. Providing social services a hundred years, Compass is now teaming up with Twitter to keep the legacy moving forward.
Compass' goals for its clients are permanent housing, economic stability and healthy development of children. Because of the 3,500 clients that Compass helps each year, half are under the age of 18. Most of the family units are single moms with one or two children and 90 percent of these homeless San Francisco families are under the poverty line.
Kisch said that she's seen an uptick in the numbers of women and children looking for housing aid due to evictions.
"The number of families seeking our services climbed staring with the recession which most folks think is over; but for most families on the economic margins, they're still being affected by lack of employment, reduced employment and the Mid-Market boom has made housing much more expensive in San Francisco and all the more our of reach for the families that we serve," she said.
Earlier this month Compass and Twitter announced a partnership called "Twitter Neighborhood Nest" for Compass clients and other non-profits that serve homeless and near homeless families in the Tenderloin/Mid-Market area.
Kisch told KCBS In Depth that it's the first time that a San Francisco-based technology company has made a commitment to build a resource center specifically for non profits serving the homeless.
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