Downtown Streets Team

What a whirlwind it has been for Downtown Streets Team, Marin! In 2023, we expanded our housing case management and street outreach efforts substantially throughout various programming county-wide. Overall, 29 of our unhoused neighbors found a place to call home through our services and support this past year, receiving the dignity, care, and stable housing they deserve. Our Team Members, volunteer work experience program participants, also expanded efforts to support their peers experiencing homelessness throughout our San Rafael communities by increasing outreach and clean-up services at designated encampment sites, which resulted in a grand total of 168,325 gallons of debris being removed from the Downtown and Canal areas of San Rafael. The impact our Team Members and direct service staff have had on the unhoused community this past year has been astronomical, but the most valued outcome of all, is that 93% of our San Rafael Team Members have felt an improved sense of self-esteem and greater self-worth since joining the Team.

As for 2024, we are full steam ahead! We’ve already had the incredible opportunity to hire on six of our San Rafael and Novato Team Members into part-time roles through our supported employment program, Streets Team Enterprises (STE). The mission of Streets Team Enterprises (STE) is to help individuals attain permanent employment by providing training and a transitional paying job. Participation in STE is temporary by design because the end goal is for participants to use STE as a stepping stone to self-sufficiency by eventually securing lasting employment in the workforce at large. We at Downtown Streets Team are consistently looking to fill the gaps in service provision and shift the gears of our programming towards where the needs of our unhoused community are most prominent. If you’d like to learn more about all things DST, you can check out our website at https://www.streetsteam.org/, or reach out to Zoë Neil, the Director of DST Marin County at zoe@streetsteam.org.