{"id":422849,"date":"2026-08-03T17:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/422849\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T17:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:41:12","slug":"scs-one-stop-shop-for-community-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/422849\/","title":{"rendered":"SCS One-Stop Shop for Community Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Sunnyvale Community Services (SCS) held its annual resource fair<\/a> for unhoused individuals and families, bringing some 20 social service agencies together to help people navigate a path out of homelessness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s open to anybody in this county,\u201d said Marie Bernard, executive director of Sunnyvale Community Services.<\/p>\n

Visitors walk out the door with useful items like sleeping bags, information about programs they can sign up for and a hot lunch.<\/p>\n

The event also fosters connections between the agencies, Bernard said, \u201cso that they know this agency is able to do this, and this other organization is able to do that.\u201d It\u2019s also a way for these partners to hear directly from people about what they need.<\/p>\n

SPONSORED<\/p>\n

\"Devid\"Devid<\/a><\/p>\n

Patelco Credit Union<\/a>, represented by Erika Aramanos, offered free one-on-one financial coaching on budgeting, saving, building credit and paying off debt.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinancial literacy is going to make a difference in making better choices,\u201d Aramanos said, steering clients away from payday lenders and other predatory loans.<\/p>\n

Job Train<\/a> offered another ingredient of self-sufficiency: employable skills.<\/p>\n

SPONSORED<\/p>\n

\"Santa\"Santa<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have six different training programs in fields that are in high demand,\u201d said Brodie Storey, an employment specialist with the nonprofit, citing carpentry pre-apprenticeship, HVAC and certified nursing and medical assistant programs.<\/p>\n

Maker Nexus<\/a>, a nonprofit maker space, promoted free youth camps with the Community Services Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen was the last time you built something, or when was the last time you tried something new?\u201d is the organization\u2019s guiding motto, said Sebastian Esteva, a Maker on Duty at Maker Nexus.<\/p>\n

Instructor Jackson Martinez described watching a girl who had been described to him as a \u201cbehavior problem\u201d blossom.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was nothing like that,\u201d he said. \u201cShe started off being quiet and not doing a lot of work. But as the week went on, she started making stickers and shirts and became interested in what we were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Homelessness is never a stand-alone problem. Take Angie, for example. This was her first visit to Sunnyvale Community Services, and she said she\u2019d been looking forward to the event.<\/p>\n

She was on disability when confusion over sales commissions from a former job left her facing a $10,000 overpayment claim she\u2019s been fighting for two years. When her roommate had surgery and could no longer work, the two had no way to pay rent. She was evicted about a month ago and now alternates nights between her car and a relative\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in a state of shock,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to know what resources are out here, and hopefully it\u2019ll help me get everything situated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her disability began with a broken back, followed by a mental health crisis and a years-long wait for a psychiatrist and therapist. She lost her job when the paperwork she needed for disability went unsigned.<\/p>\n

Untangling this kind of knot is Maria Wendralston\u2019s daily work. She\u2019s spent 16 years at Sunnyvale Community Services helping clients apply for county benefits such as CalFresh and Medi-Cal, and, when needed, Social Security, unemployment and disability.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes when I start with a one-on-one interview, I\u2019ll find out there may be some domestic violence going on,\u201d Wendralston explained. \u201cI may find out that there\u2019s an autistic child, but they\u2019re not getting benefits. So, my umbrella extends to what a client needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recounted the story of a client hit with a $6,000 unemployment overpayment notice, the result of having both unemployment and disability claims open simultaneously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI contacted the Assemblyman\u2019s office, and their aides helped me cut to the chase and get their benefits verified, so it\u2019s handled by an administrative process instead of a hearing in front of the administrative judge,\u201d said Wendralston.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very blessed to have this experience,\u201d she continued, \u201cso that when someone comes in because they are being evicted, I\u2019m able to look at what resources they may already have, and know that they don\u2019t have to go through a lot of red tape.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Unhoused Response Group<\/a>, by contrast, focuses on immediate needs. The group began in March 2020 delivering PPE and COVID information directly into encampments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go out to camps, we go to sweeps,\u201d said Shawn Cartwright, one of the group\u2019s leaders. \u201cIt\u2019s important to represent the voices of the people who are literally on the streets being swept \u2014 places where they\u2019ve been \u2018swept\u2019 to. Abatement is a sanitized word that takes out the emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Posts:
Special Delivery to Feed Silicon Valley\u2019s Hungry<\/a>
Living on the Edge: Poverty Simulation Makes it Real<\/a>
SCS Supporters Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, Sunnyvale Community Services (SCS) held its annual resource fair for unhoused individuals and families, bringing some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6036,88,90,89,2922,203,107704],"class_list":["post-422849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area-news","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-silicon-valley-voice","tag-sunnyvale","tag-sunnyvale-community-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}