Leading in Times of Challenge & Change

Despite the challenges of last year, we are proud of being able to accomplish our mission: to support families and individuals experiencing homelessness in their efforts to rapidly return to stable housing and achieve self-sufficiency. 

Foundational to the LifeMoves mission is to support our clients through their entire journey to self-sufficient, stable housing, and our staff work tirelessly to make this goal a reality for every person whom we engage. In FY20, LifeMoves served 6,497 people and provided over 230,000 nights of shelter. Despite COVID-19, LifeMoves helped our clients find housing at the same rates as before the pandemic — successfully moving more than 2,000 clients into stable housing amidst this unprecedented crisis.

As our clients faced a devastated economy, it became even more critical for our teams to help them navigate financial uncertainty with specialized training to save and manage their money. Through group workshops and individual coaching sessions, clients learn key skills including budgeting, building/repairing credit, and strategies for wise borrowing. By building a secure financial foundation, our clients leave LifeMoves equipped with the tools and resources they need to make informed financial decisions that will prepare them for long-term stability.

Even before the pandemic, the Silicon Valley job market was highly competitive and many of our clients worked at jobs that simply didn’t pay a living wage for the Bay Area. Once COVID-19 hit, many of these same clients were placed on furlough or laid off. However, our staff swiftly and successfully shifted focus to help find jobs that were urgently hiring and paying competitive wages due to increased demand. By committing to career skills development, resume workshops, and regular job searches, our clients have found new careers and maintained stable employment – a crucial element to securing a home of their own.

2020 presented a series of seemingly insurmountable hardships. Our communities coped with incredible loss – loss of routine, loss of career, and loss of loved ones. In response to increased stress and trauma, LifeMoves offered resources to best support the mental health and wellbeing of all clients and staff, including therapeutic services provided by video or tele-health.

The experience of homelessness is traumatic in and of itself — and many of our clients have experienced chronic trauma over the course of their lives. LifeMoves provides integrated behavioral health services and support designed to foster mental and emotional wellness, enhanced interpersonal capacity, and self-efficacy for the children, families, adults, Veterans, and seniors we serve. Services include addiction and recovery support, on-site mental health assessments, and both one-on-one and group therapy.

While health and wellness has always been a pillar in our programs, in FY20, COVID-19 shook our community with a public health emergency, posing unique and life-threatening risks to the homeless populations we serve. Hygiene became a top priority – our teams conducted deeper and more frequent cleaning, hand sanitizer turned into a necessity, and we focused on educating clients on the importance of increased hygiene in their communal living environments. Thanks to overwhelming community support, LifeMoves provided (and continues to provide) masks and personal protective equipment to keep our community safe. We developed strict screening protocols to prevent virus spread within our sites — all clients and staff have temperatures checked and are required to answer screening questions before entering, and we created space for safe quarantine when necessary.

Of the 1,200 people whom we serve every day and night, about 25% are children. When COVID-19 emerged, our teams needed to rethink existing education programs to help the children staying at our shelters succeed in the virtual classroom. From outdoor Summer Camp sessions to online classes, LifeMoves staff worked quickly to make academic programming safe, engaging, and socially distanced.