Helping Families Most in Need
Las Casitas is a permanent supportive housing program for disabled, homeless families. Most of the families are involved with Child Protective Services and are in the Substance Abuse Recovery Management Systems (SARMS) program. The Las Casitas program offers these families the opportunity to reunite with their children after court-enforced separation for drug or alcohol treatment.
 Case managers at Child Protective Services refer all of their eligible clients to the program. The case manager assesses the family and determines whether their needs are those that can be provided by Las Casitas. Once the family is in the program the case manager and the SARMS worker are responsible for continuing case management, drug testing and referrals for other social needed services like counseling, and classes in parenting and finances.
CHW has two Las Casitas programs in the Escondido, CA area. Las Casitas – Maple, first opened in 1991, includes six small one-bedroom bungalows.
The other site in Escondido is located on Washington Avenue and has been open since 2003. Las Casitas – Washington consists of eight two-bedroom apartments. It’s an independent living arrangement which is only open to families with a demonstrated capacity to live in an unsupervised, sober living environment.
Combined, the two Las Casitas communities have:
- Assisted 80+ families to transition from homelessness to permanent housing.
- Provided low rents to help these families save money and increase chances they can afford conventional rental housing.
- Helped almost 93% of the families in our program successfully complete their recovery from substance abuse, enabling them to remain “clean.”
Who Gets Helped?
Before moving into a Las Casitas facility, most of our residents either lived at a substance abuse treatment facility, with relatives, with friends, or on the street.
Over half the people who have benefitted from Las Casitas are children. Most of our families at Maple are single moms with small children, while families at Washington tend to have one or two parents with 2-4 kids. Ethnically, some two-thirds of the families we’ve helped are Anglo White, 18% are Latino, and 11% are African American.
The long-term vision
Las Casitas offers a safe and supportive environment for families to reunite and focus on rebuilding a normal life without drugs or alcohol. It gives them a healthy base from which to regroup and set solid lifestyle goals in an effort to reclaim their future. This is important to a vulnerable population that otherwise has few housing options in San Diego County.
By providing a safe, well-maintained place to live, Community HousingWorks raises the expectations that these families live by. The impact, both for families we serve and the community at large, is to re-establish an independent, productive family system able to live without their previous patterns of self-destructive behavior.
Everyone wins with a program like Las Casitas: the children have stopped hurting, the parents have a MUCH higher chance of future sucess, and the local and state welfare systems have returned dozens of families to a healthy position in society.
Good housing news for lower income households
Proposition 1C – California’s $2.85 billion housing bond - provides financing to aid new construction, rehabilitation and/or preservation of permanent and transitional housing that is affordable. So far, so good, right?
 Thanks to this bond, two pipeline CHW apartment complexes are now significantly closer to becoming reality. Both are transit-oriented developments.
The Boulevard at North Park – a 175 unit mixed use project planned for development on El Cajon Boulevard (two blocks east of Park Boulevard) – will be on the new MTS Rapid Bus Line between SDSU and Downtown. Four stories of apartments around a central courtyard will be built atop two stories of retail/commercial space and parking. The complex will also set aside 20 apartments to support youth with mental disabilities.
To bring The Boulevard to fruition, CHW applied for (and received) $9.5 million through a very competitive statewide bidding process. Anne Wilson, CHW’s Senior VP/Housing & Real Estate Development, reports that CHW is on the state’s “short list” for another $5.5 million designated for similar projects.
A separate (and as yet un-named) pipeline project planned for development in the Old Westside neighborhood in National City is a partnership between The Related Companies of California and Community HousingWorks. This transit-oriented development - located one block from the National City Trolley Station – won an $11.2 million Infill Infrastructure Grant (IIG). It will be situated on 14 acres as part of a Master Plan, with 300+ units at build out, and enjoys the strong support of both the community and the city of National City. Phase One is planned to be ready for new families in 2013.
“Winning Prop 1C money is not easy,” says Mary Jane Jagodzinski, Senior Project Manager for both complexes, who notes. “Community HousingWorks was up against some very strong competition. We are very pleased we were awarded financing for both projects.”
Quench our Kids’ Thirst for Books!
These kids are thirsty!
We’re having an old-fashioned BOOK DRIVE to build the learning libraries for our After School programs at SOLARA, Hillside Village, Park View Terrace and Oak Knoll Villas.
 Stop by on October 17, 2009, between 9:00 am and noon at the San Diego National Bank (corner of Poway & Community Roads), Poway.
Help improve a child’s mind. Drop off a new or used book suitable for children at any point in their school career – grades K-12. Don’t have a book for a specific child? Donate materials suitable for use in the school library (reference, encyclopedias, software, etc.) We guarantee it will all be put to good use!
Raffles, ice cream and fun for all!
Call K.J. Koljonen - 619-282-6647 Ext. 5692 – for more info.
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