Silicon Valley Playbook Addresses Homelessness
Modular, Interim Housing Playbook Offers Open-Source Solution
MENLO PARK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#CallToAction–LifeMoves, the largest provider of interim housing in Silicon Valley, announces our “Playbook for Modular, Interim Housing.” LifeMoves’ Playbook offers a case study on our 26th interim housing site, located in the city of Mountain View, CA (our first modular site), tools, diagrams and lessons learned during the process. LifeMoves is a California based non-profit that focuses on supportive services and interim housing in order to help clients return to stable housing.
Download the full playbook at www.lifemoves.org/playbook.
“LifeMoves is based in the heart of Silicon Valley,” said LifeMoves CEO Aubrey Merriman. “We took a page from the most innovative engineers in our community and are offering all of our intellectual property in the same spirit as open source software. We hope that our playbook gives civic and philanthropic leaders the platform necessary to build and integrate modular, interim housing into their communities in order to break the cycle of homelessness.”
Merriman continued: “Our new Mountain View site is also a tool in the fight for equity and social justice. This new site has the capacity to reduce the current homeless population by 50% in Mountain View over the next year. We know that the pandemic has had a disparate impact on communities of color. As we grow our capacity to serve neighbors made homeless in the pandemic, our pandemic response is also an equity response. Even before the pandemic, we know that communities of color were over-represented in the population experiencing homelessness. As we scale our impact to serve those people most impacted, our housing solution is also an equity solution. This site will help us move more people from homelessness to housing and also help us to build a more just and inclusive community.”
In under 6 months, with the State of California HomeKey award, the City of Mountain View, LinkedIn, Google and local philanthropic support, LifeMoves built and is operating this interim housing site known as LifeMoves Mountain View. These 100 modular units (built offsite) will house 88 individuals and couples, and 12 families. The efficiency, speed and lower cost of modular housing is an innovative solution that creates critical interim housing needed to help fight the growing number of homeless, especially in light of the devastation that the pandemic has had on the most vulnerable in our communities. A traditional, interim housing site would have taken 18-24 months to construct and bring online. This Playbook details how LifeMoves conceived and built LifeMoves Mountain View and outlines how you can do the same in your community. LifeMoves’ hope is that this Playbook will serve as a catalyst for additional federal, state and community funding across the nation to combat homelessness.
Video tour of LifeMoves Mountain View.
LifeMoves will continue to add data, toolkits, webinars and other assets to our Playbook website in order to share best practices with as many communities as we can. Please download the Playbook Executive Summary at www.lifemoves.org/playbook and receive regular updates on building modular, interim housing and providing the services our clients need in order to return to stable housing.
ABOUT LIFEMOVES
LifeMoves is the largest provider of interim housing and services for homelessness in Silicon Valley. With 26 shelter and service sites from Daly City to San José (our two newest sites are Mountain View and Half Moon Bay), LifeMoves gives our neighbors experiencing homelessness a temporary place to call home while providing intensive, customized case management through both site-based programs and community outreach. The case management teaches the skills that clients need in order to get back to and stay in stable housing and is often referred to as the LifeMoves “secret sauce.” 86% of families and 67% of individuals who engage in LifeMoves programs return to stable housing. Please join us in helping our neighbors: www.lifemoves.org.
Contacts
Media Contact:
Samantha Peterson
[email protected]
775-843-0896
