Homeless Families Need Your Help

Mother and son residing in the Rhonda Fleming Family Center at PATH.

July 2010 - More and more families like Sarah's are turning to PATH for help. Your support helps families experiencing homelessness find their way HOME.

Please contribute today.

Sarah and her 12-year-old son were struggling to survive. They lost their house after Sarah’s company downsized, eliminating her job. It was a young mother’s nightmare. She, her child and their two beloved dogs were homeless. Worried about her son’s well-being, Sarah found him a place to stay with friends while she slept in a park with their pets.

Follow Sarah’s PATH to a new life:

PATH Street Outreach Teams, caseworkers who reach out to people on the streets, found Sarah while she was sleeping in the park with her two dogs. They brought her to PATH.

PATHWays Housing provided Sarah and her son with warm beds and nutritious meals. They were no longer separated from each other.

PETCO Place, PATH’s home for pets, provided a safe haven and special care for their two dogs. Sarah could concentrate on her son and getting back on her feet.

PATHFinders Job Centers helped Sarah find and keep a full-time job so she could save money for their new home.

The PATHMall provided dozens of crucial supportive services, like counseling, employment assistance, healthcare and even a beauty salon.

Home Again. Sarah’s PATH brought her to a new job and a new apartment. Her family, pets and all, had found their way back home.

July 2010 - On Saturday, July 24th, please join Westwood Presbyterian Church for its annual summer benefit musicale! All proceeds will go to benefit PATH, Child SHARE and Westside Food Bank.

DATE: Saturday, July 24th, 2010
TIME: 7:30 p.m.
FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: (310) 474-4353

There will be a celebration reception after the program.

The suggested minimum donation is $25 per person, but more is always welcomed and encouraged!

June 2010 - Pepsi is giving away millions to fund great ideas. For the month of June, PATH is in the running to receive $5,000. If we win, the funding will go to purchase new kennels for Petco Place, our "shelter within a shelter" for the pets of our homeless residents.

Help Us Win Pepsi's Money

Vote for us so that we can keep more pets safe and healthy while their owners receive housing and services. You can vote for us once every day.

Spread the Word

Clients wait to receive services in the Resource Center of the PATH Mall.

June 2010 - By Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH Partners

Images of homeless people sleeping in a large warehouse and loitering throughout a neighborhood are not today’s view of how homeless agencies operate. That is a 30-year-old picture of 1980s programs.

Today, successful homeless programs in other cities show dramatic decreases of homelessness on the streets surrounding their facilities. These programs use a business approach where the customers are both people who are homeless and people living and working in the surrounding neighborhood.

The neighborhood profits when there is a reduction of homelessness on its streets and people who are homeless benefit when they are actually housed.

This new business model for addressing homelessness is being proposed at the World Trade Center building on Sixth Avenue and A Street in downtown San Diego. The new facility, Connections Housing, is designed to significantly reduce the number of people living on the streets of the financial district. [...]

May 2010 - By Danielle Moriarty

I am the first to admit I held a very large prejudice against homeless people. I thought they were all lazy, ungrateful, and couldn’t save for a rainy day. It was hard for me to identify with the chronic problem of homelessness as anyone who knows me would never use those words to describe me. I am determined, dedicated, and have always saved for the future.

Then I started volunteering at PATH (People Assisting The Homeless). At first it was just a small project at PATH Glendale Achieve. I was helping redesign and decorate the children’s tutor room / therapist room. During the trips to IKEA and such, the program director Natalie Komuro and I started talking about the clients at Glendale Achieve. I also started talking to the staff and hearing first-hand about the hows and whys people become homeless.

Slowly, the layers surrounding the issue of homelessness began to peel away. The blurred image begging at the freeway ramp started to come into focus, revealing a face. These are people who are often dealing with severe mental health problems, drug / substance abuse, or just a dose of bad luck and unfortunate timing. Having wrestled with my own bout of depression and knowing close friends who have struggled with substance abuse, I began to think about what made our stories and outcomes different from those who ended up on the streets. It boils down to having a family and a support system that can only be described as unconditional love and forgiveness. I have a family who will never give up on me, never turn their backs on me, and never shut the door on me. I began to see what could have become of me, and realized that each and every homeless individual is just that, a person....

May 2010 - PATH recently reached a significant Facebook milestone: Our 1,000th fan! Lucky #1,000 is Danny Wacker, a member of the class of 2014 at San Diego State University.

In honor of Danny being our 1,000th fan, we asked him to tell us a little bit about himself.

PATH: How did you hear about PATH?
Danny: I've done a couple things at my temple (Wilshire Boulevard Temple) that benefited PATH. I'm currently writing two papers on homelessness at school for different classes, and I mentioned PATH in them. I wanted to see if you guys were on Facebook and noticed you had 999 fans. I was proud to be number 1,000....