History

History and Background of Communities Advocating for Resident Empowerment

Communities Advocating for Resident Empowerment (C.A.R.E.) was created to provide children, youth, families and seniors living in affordable housing communities with critical social services and programs that reinforce self-empowerment, foster economic independence and encourage community involvement.

C.A.R.E. was formed through an association with Las Palmas Foundation (Las Palmas), a real estate development company specializing in the development and long-term ownership of affordable rental housing. In providing solutions to the affordable housing challenge, the principals of Las Palmas recognized that besides building safe, secure neighborhoods, that enhancing the lives of residents through social service programming is essential.

The goal in creating C.A.R.E. was to provide supportive social and educational services to all of the residents living at the 26 Las Palmas properties scattered across California. The organization recognized that many youth, adult and senior residents needed and deserved more than just basic shelter. A ‘wrap around’ holistic model of care/service was developed. The vision was to provide culturally sensitive social services and educational programming that would positively impact the lives of those living at the communities. These services would be offered at no cost to the residents.

A Director of Social Service was hired in 2005. The Director took on the task of developing partnerships with service providers, overseeing site staff, and ensuring quality of service of programs at the 26 affordable housing communities across California (serving more than 4,000 residents). Slowly but surely by the end of 2005, culturally sensitive services began to be provided to the most needy low income populations at all of the properties.

Services were provided in multiple languages and included:

• mental health services
• health services
• technology/education classes
• community advocacy
• parenting classes
• job training and placement
• financial literacy classes
• food distribution
• child care

In May 2006, the Las Palmas team strategically planned and developed an affiliate social service organization that would serve all of the affordable housing communities that are developed and owned by Las Palmas. The long term goal of this entity is to focus on strategic fund raising which would ensure expansion of all of the programming and services, support a sustainable model at all properties, and enable C.A.R.E. to continuously provide quality assurance. In addition, the organization would focus on raising monies that would support the creation of models of service that could become replicated at other sites as funding expanded. In April 2006, Las Palmas received its IRS determination letter for Communities Advocating for Resident Empowerment (C.A.R.E.).

Our goal is to ensure that every property has consistent, high quality social services based on the needs of the individual community and a holistic model of service. We want to ensure that we have sustainable services at every individual property, regardless of the budget of the building so that we can mobilize Californians in affordable housing communities to enjoy healthy, fulfilling lives.