“One of the main challenges here is maintaining hope. I like to think that’s what our business is. But there’s no quick fix. It’s a long, arduous journey.”
LuAnn Briggs in her apartment at the Vineyard Resource Center on Monday, Oct. 28, 2024, in Livermore, Calif. Briggs was living in her car prior to securing an apartment at the center. Vineyard Resource Center offers a range of supportive programs and services in one location, including a production kitchen and Community Meal Program services. Each evening, the dining room is converted into an overnight adult shelter called the Open Heart Refuge.
“It’s really a miracle,” Briggs said of the change in her circumstances. “This place and these people saved my life. They really did.” The nonprofit operates its kitchen and works with other organizations to steer unhoused people into the apartments at the Vineyard Resource Center — where Briggs lives — as well as onto the 20 cots that are available in the dining area after the kitchen closes each night.“We don’t consider these people homeless, we consider them unhoused, and that’s an important distinction,” Bost said. “To be called ‘homeless’ is to give a person that sense of being invisible and un-noticed.
“The idea in trying to keep them together is that when you’re in a situation where you are unhoused, it’s easy to get into your head that nobody has gone through what you’ve been through,” Bost said. “To hear from others that they’ve been through things that aren’t exactly the same but are pretty darn close is very affirming.”
“I thought I would be fine in my car. I really did. I had it planned out how it would work, how I could do it, and I was confident,” she said. “But the diminishment of hope was so rapid. It was gone almost in a blink of the eye.”
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