Grace in the Community: Canon Barcus Community House

The Canon Barcus Community House at 8th and Natoma

Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco has been working with agencies throughout the city to bring assistance and training to its most vulnerable citizens.  The organization, and the programs it administers, was born from a conversation in the winter of 1983 that the Bishop of California had with San Francisco’s Mayor.

The Right Rev. William Swing describes that conversation vividly: “Dianne Feinstein was Mayor and she called up and said, ‘We’ve got a little problem with homelessness that we’ve never had before. And it’ll go away in a little while, but while it’s here, could you just house some people at Grace Cathedral?’ And so we went over and started housing 40 people the first night with 40 cots, and some donuts and coffee. And twenty years later, we‘ve housed over 1150 homeless. We’ve gotten over 11,000 people in the last 17 years from homelessness into jobs, into independent living.”

From that conversation, The Bishop oversaw the creation of Episcopal Community Services, to provide shelter, housing and social services to homeless and formerly homeless people. However, as the homeless population grew from predominantly single men to encompass women and families with children, the services that the shelters provided were no longer sufficient -- and ECS responded with new programs to handle the needs of the increased population.

Andrea Canaan is the Support Services Manager for the Canon Barcus Community House (CBCH), a facility that provides permanent housing in a 48-unit building in San Francisco. “The homeless population had changed but no one was talking about women, families, or kids living on the streets,” says Canaan. “Or that shelters are pretty horrible places where vulnerable people are preyed upon by other vulnerable people. They are dangerous places for kids.”

Ms. Canaan is a Social Worker and Family Therapist who has been at CBCH for a year and is very excited about the services it provides the community. “Our purpose is to support families to stabilize and keep a roof over their heads.

“We reunify people with their families, attend to their medical needs and issues. We provide mental health services to families and their children through a program with Homeless Children’s Network -- these people are lifesavers! A therapist will meet twice a week with children and adults, individually and together, to help them recover from the effects of homelessness.”

Part of a healthy recovery process comes from bringing dignity back to people who have lost everything. One way CBCH does this is by creating a beautiful environment for people to call home. Volunteer decorators from Philanthropy by Design created environments with the residents for the spaces they would move into.  Choosing from among furnishings donated by designer manufacturers, local quilting guilds, and St. Lydia’s Guild of St. Francis’ Episcopal Church, the residents were able to take ownership of their homes and of the change they were making for their families. "Everyone involved was pleasantly surprised by how the incoming residents embraced the project," says San Francisco designer Randall Koll. "It was the ultimate validation for us. The project was about more than just decoration, it was sometimes about helping these people make the transition and understand how to live in a full house."

Another aspect of restoring people’s sense of self is assisting parents in being good providers for their children’s needs. “There are particular cycles of the year that are particularly oppressive for the poor and disenfranchised,” says Canaan, “like Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and back-to-school time.  We’ve partnered with outside groups to create programs that foster the dignity of parents and their children. Around back-to-school time we received backpacks with school supplies for the kids at Canon Barcus. Grace Cathedral sent us tons of stuff, and the parents could select what their family needed.

“At Christmas, just about every family was ‘adopted’ by someone from the outside community. Each person got to say what they wanted. Because we’ve got many multi-generational households here, you know, a mom with three kids and grandma, or grandma and her grandson, or kids aged infant to twenty in one household. So when Christmas happened, everyone had something that was so important to them, because they got to say what they wanted and receive it. And they got to see that people care about them outside their immediate community. They got to feel that connection with a larger world.”

To find out how you can connect to the work of Episcopal Community Services, click here.

Background content drawn from "Defining Style" by Susan Peliks, Options for Today's Fine Homes magazine, Spring 2003.