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Wanda Holland is no stranger to hard times.
As a young adult living with her mother, Holland experienced her first, short stint of homelessness.
So when Holland, a 62-year-old Bay Area native, had her own children and grandchildren she vowed to work hard so that they could have the future they dreamed of — one filled with comfort and security.
After spending nearly 30 years working for the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Menlo Park and Palo Alto and surviving a heart attack, Holland had saved up enough money to retire and work part-time as a private, in-home caretaker.
Then in June 2018, Holland’s life was turned upside down again.
She and her family were forced out of their apartment amid family-related problems and she found herself living out of her car.
“I was in denial, I just kept thinking ‘this couldn’t happen to me,'” Holland said in a recent interview. “When you have your children and grandchildren depending on you, it really eats away at you because you feel like you can’t provide for them.”
Just when Holland was ready to give up, in swooped the Community Services Agency.
The nonprofit organization, which serves residents in Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, offers a variety of homeless and homelessness prevention services. Holland sought help from the agency’s one-time emergency financial assistance program, which includes payments for rent, utilities, healthcare needs and transportation.
Holland and her family had been living on the streets for just about a year when she first received assistance from the organization. She began buying weekly stays at a motel near her grandsons’ high school. But forking up hundreds of dollars a week for a room, other bills — like her car registration — went to the wayside.
Seeing it as an immediate way to aid Holland and her family, the Community Services Agency paid for the registration.
Then a couple of months later, still motivated to gain stability for her grandsons, Holland began an extensive apartment search and went back to the agency for one more request — money to rent an apartment.
The organization — after sitting down with Holland and making sure she had the finances to sustain the payment — gave her a check for a deposit and first month’s rent. And to top it all off, threw in furniture to fill the family’s new home.
“I was shocked. I honestly didn’t think I was going to get it,” Holland said.
After walking in their front door in September, she said, her oldest grandson, 17, began crying, kissed the wall and whispered, “thank you.”
The agency’s rental assistance program is one of the most expensive offered by the organization but it’s also “one of the most satisfying”, according to Tom Myers, executive director of CSA.
To continue to help people like Holland, the agency is seeking $5,000 — $2,500 helps pay for one month’s rent for a family facing eviction and homelessness, and $1,000 keeps the light and heat on for one to two months for four families struggling with an emergency financial situation.
“Rental assistance is one of our quickest ways to get people into stability and ensure that a one-time emergency will not force a family to move onto the streets,” Myers said.
According to Santa Clara County’s latest homelessness census, sudden one-time emergencies like losing a job was why nearly a third of the county’s homeless population wound up on the streets, in shelters or in their cars.
The 2019 county census has shown a widespread increase in homelessness in all corners of the county. The number of homeless people living in Mountain View has increased 46 percent in the past two years — from 416 in 2017 to 606 in 2019. The number in Los Altos increased from two homeless individuals in 2017 to 76 in 2019.
Community Services Agency has seen a 10 percent jump in the number of people seeking homeless services in the past year alone. The organization provided emergency funds to nearly 200 individuals and families last year.
Myers says he has no doubt that the region’s housing crisis has led to the increase in people who are seeking services from the agency.
“It’s driving people further and further in poverty, driving people to need to come to us for assistance, and in many cases, driving people out of Mountain View,” Myers said. “And that’s what is really sad.”
Compared to some of its neighbors on the Peninsula, Mountain View had a robust, socioeconomically diverse community with Silicon Valley executives and professors living next door to mechanics and janitors. But, as Myers sees it, that diversity has disappeared.
CSA attempts to offer stability to as many of their clients in Mountain View, but in instances like Holland’s, they’ll help people move wherever they prefer if it means they’ll be off the streets.
“Ideally, they’re staying in Mountain View, because that’s they’re home. But to us, it’s more important that they’re stable,” Myers said.
Holland says she feels lucky she was able to get a home and would not have been able to do it without her strong support system of friends, church members and organizations like the Community Services Association.
Since moving into the new place she says she’s seen a noticeable change in both her and her grandsons’ demeanors. Now instead of worrying about where to park at night and the safety of her sleeping grandchildren, she finds herself worrying about whether her grandson’s football jersey will dry if she hangs it over the bedroom door overnight.
“We still find it amazing that we’re still in here,” Holland said, “that we still have a place to call home again after so long.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
The Wish Book is an annual series of The Mercury News that invites readers to help their neighbors.
WISH
Donations will support the Community Services Agency emergency financial assistance program, which helps low-income residents with rent, utilities, healthcare needs and transportation. Goal: $5,000
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com or mail in the coupon.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com.
