Community Housing Partnership

Community Housing Partnership is a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, California, that provides housing, job training and other services to formerly homeless people. Founded in 1990, it owns and operates 14 residential buildings and collaborates with other organizations in its goals.

The organization offers housing, job training, case management, community organizing, resident engagement and other support services to the formerly homeless. It began "with the idea that many homeless people suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that this cycle wouldn't be broken unless they have a longer-term supportive community to live in." Since Community Housing Partnership was founded in 1990, more than a thousand housing units have been provided to help over 2,200 people. It is one of the city's "largest supportive-housing providers," and it provides specialized services for people with disabilities and mental-health or substance-abuse challenges.

Community Housing Partnership sprang from the destruction wreaked upon San Francisco by the massive Loma Prieta earthquake of October 1989, which damaged or destroyed scores of buildings and left some twelve thousand people homeless. "Almost all of the homeless shelters I worked with had to empty out because they were in bad shape," recalled Paul Boden, organizing director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. In the earthquake aftermath, some financial support became available for property owners and renters with long-term leases, but no help was forthcoming for the homeless and low-income residents. A Navy aircraft carrier entered San Francisco Bay to provide some shelter for the homeless, Boden said.

Boden and fellow board members of the Coalition on Homelessness Joe Wilson, Greg Francis and Laura Ware had earlier written a proposal for San Francisco to build permanent housing for the homeless "instead of just temporary shelters." San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos allocated some $2.2 million from the city's earthquake relief fund to put the proposal into action. A year later, Community Housing Partnership was opened.

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