New challenge, new leadership for Healdsburg’s Reach for Home

Christmas came early for Reach for Home when a long-awaited financial goal and a “perfect” vehicle became available. The organization was able to buy a dedicated medical van, due in part to the success of their annual fundraiser, Dinner in the Vineyard, along with funds from Impact 100 and the Healthcare Foundation.

The fundraising event, originally planned for August, had to first be converted to a virtual format because of the coronavirus pandemic. With the Walbridge fire bearing down on the community, the fundraiser then had to be rescheduled on short notice to Nov. 18.

However, the double whammy didn’t make virtual attendees any less supportive of the group. The event was a roaring success, to date bringing in about $180,000.

Reach for Home underwent a big change beginning in July when co-founder and executive director Colleen Carmichael submitted her resignation and the search for a new director began. Carmichael left in November.

Enter Margaret Sluyk, former executive directer for the Northwestern Region of Canine Companions, and now filling the same role at Reach for Home. She transferred to Sonoma County from Southern California, arriving just in time to experience the Tubbs fire in 2017. She saw how the community came together and was impressed by the attitude, though she said it was challenging to move to a new town where you know nobody, to suddenly knowing six people who had lost their homes to the fire.

Sluyk, 45, was part of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Santa Rosa Class 35, kicking off a desire to do something with less travel, as she traveled about once a month for Canine Companions, and also to work in the community where she lives.

Reach for Home is the organizational offshoot of the former North County Community Services, first begun by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Healdsburg. Rector Sally Hubble saw that the organization needed to be a community project, not just a church effort. She worked closely with Carmichael to create the organization it is today.

“I’m up for the challenge. Colleen got the organization to where it is now,” said Sluyk in a telephone interview.

She cited their number one priority as housing unsheltered people and continuously working on finding units. Their outreach team works with people experiencing homelessness, building trust through daily visits and the provision of basic food items and supplies. They also provide transportation to medical appointments to improve health and well-being of individuals and families.

Currently, the program houses 41 participants in 11 units and three homes. The Street Medicine Program has served over 300 individuals since its beginning in September 2019.

First step housing provides those ready to move into a home and the program usually lasts about three months, while clients are preparing for Rapid Re-Housing or Permanent Supportive Housing. Rapid Re-Housing provides education and help in economic stability, helping people get back to market-rate housing. Permanent Supportive Housing is available for the most vulnerable in the community. Case managers work with clients and other providers to empower clients to build necessary skills to achieve stable housing.

Staff includes Sluyk; Jaclyn Ramirez, a licensed vocational nurse and chronic care professional with the Street Medicine Program; Laurie Mitchell, housing director; Rick Cafferata, homeless outreach coordinator; and Ana Rangel, director of operations.

The street medicine team will be better equipped to deal with medical issues that come up frequently with supplies right at hand in the new van. The van, already outfitted for medical visits, provides privacy not available in the passenger van they had been using for transportation and street medicine.

Current Board Chair Mona Hanes, said their budget was $1.6 million for the calendar year. In addition to private donations and fundraisers, Reach for Home receives funding from the city of Healdsburg, the Town of Windsor and a small amount from the County of Sonoma. Client managers are partially paid by the county.

Hanes has been on the board three years and assumed the chair a year and a half ago. She’s been working with homeless communities since the 1980s. When she started, in a bitterly cold Chicago winter, she saw the same men in bus stops and in the parks and was trying to understand why they wouldn’t choose to move south where it was warmer. She learned that at that time, 95% of homeless people lived near where they were born and grew up; 50% were veterans with what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder and 50% were mentally incapable. (The two categories overlapped.)

Early in the pandemic (before Sluyk’s time) the medical team worked hard to make sure people could stay with their “pod,” albeit in encampments. They took temperatures, provided food and medical care and made sure the camps were not hubs of transmission of COVID-19.

Both Sluyk and Hanes agree about the needs of the community members they serve. It’s hard to get a job if you don’t have an address and can’t take a shower.

To that end, Hanes would like to see a permanent shelter. The winter shelter at St. Paul’s Hall can only serve eight this year because of the pandemic. For unknown reasons, perhaps that very pandemic, most people coming at night have already been part of the same pod of people living together in a camp. No one has been turned away.

“We have a generous and tolerant community in Healdsburg, but we need permanent solutions,” said Hanes.

Reach for Home works with Burbank Housing and Danko Construction and they are working on a partnership with Eden Housing. Of course, their biggest partner continues to be St. Paul’s.

Sluyk says they need more funding in general.

“We can do more with more, everybody can,” she said, then continued,

“We all need to remember that these are members of our community that we might not see every day, or that we might not want to see them because it’s tough. We need to open our arms and embrace everybody and remember those who are unsheltered or just one check away from homeless in our community—they’re our people and they are part of us. This can be solved, if we all come together and work together.”

Carmichael, the former executive director, has moved to the Pacific Northwest and is currently taking a sabbatical. Afterward, she will spend time creating a new program slated to treat the childhood trauma that creates many of the challenges the shelterless face.

She’d like to create a program that will help children strengthen the areas of their brains that provide the resilience that helps when one experiences trauma. She worked at Reach for Home from 2014 until 2020 and she found that the hardest part of her job was convincing the public that the homeless clients she worked for every day were damaged children and they were all worthy of love and recognition, even though they often behaved in a prickly manner.

She says her mission is to work on the science behind what happens to a traumatized brain and how to combat that, increasing resiliency and providing tools for healing.

“I know I have to do this,” said Carmichael, “The new generations of children will be the light.”

Meanwhile Sluyk continues to educate and inform the community, as do Hanes and the rest of the board of director’s 13 members and staff of five.

Hanes says encampments are close to the community, as these unsheltered community members need the services in town, such as medical care and grocery stores. More than 80% of those community members have lived in Healdsburg, or the other three North County towns and cities, for 20 years.

The project most dear to Hanes’ heart, “lacking immediate solutions to everything, is anything that makes a day in the life of a homeless person easier — making sure they are a little bit warmer, a little better fed, and having an opportunity at working toward a better life.”

She urges the community to get to know all the members, sheltered or not, as individuals. Learn their names, say hello and recognize them.

“Margaret is great for the organization now; a seasoned nonprofit executive with a finance background. All of the staff of Reach for Home is dedicated and doing the most they can with current resources. Hopefully, with more resources we can continue and expand the work,” Hanes said.