After a decade and a half of advocating for the homeless in the Mission and throughout the city, Mission Neighborhood Resource Center director Laura Guzman announced on Monday that she will be leaving her post in pursuit of new endeavors.
“I leave my heart in the Mission,” wrote Guzman in a Facebook post announcing her departure from the center that she has led since its inception 15 years ago.
In an interview with Mission Local, she added “I’m ready but the bitter sweetness and the pain is there. I’ve been [in the Mission] for 22 years – most of my adult life.”
Guzman will be taking a job as the Continuum of Care Director for Alameda County’s Everyone Home initiative, the county’s leading movement to end homelessness. The Continuum of Care is a regional or local body that coordinates funding for housing and services for homeless families and individuals.
The Mission Neighborhood Center was founded in 2002 at 165 Capp St. as a direct response to the needs of the Mission’s homeless population. The center provides on-site medical and shelter services and advocates for housing and resources to meet the varying needs of homeless residents in the neighborhood.
In Alameda, Guzman said that she will lead the county’s program to establish annual funding criteria for the county’s Continuum of Care program, provide technical assistance to federally-funded organizations and oversee Alameda’s bi-annual homeless count.
In addition, Guzman will be joining the county’s EveryOne Home Senior Leadership team to address the “increasing and devastating impact of homelessness throughout the county.”
Guzman called the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center one of the most regarded and robust homeless resource centers in the city’s emergency service portfolio, describing her time there as some of the most “exciting, challenging, inspiring and beautiful work I have done in my life.”
Under her leadership, the center expanded free clinic services that include TB testing and primary care, and provided support for immigrant housing at Casa Quezada, a 52-unit supportive housing site in the Mission for the formerly homeless.
Guzman, along with her staff, also pioneered the city’s first Navigation Center at 1950 Mission St. to provide shelter and supportive services for the Mission’s tent dwellers and unsheltered population. In its pilot phase, the center housed some 100 people, Guzman wrote.
Over the years, the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center evolved into playing a critical role in advocacy around the housing needs of Latino immigrants, people of color, women and the LGBTQ communities. The latter, Guzman wrote “continue to unfortunately grow among the numbers of people impacted by homelessness” in San Francisco and throughout California.
Guzman’s last day as director of the center will be on May 30. The center’s Deputy Director, Fernando Gomez Benitez, will assume leadership until a replacement is found.
In her parting words to the Mission community, Guzman encouraged the center’s staff and its allies to “continue on the trajectory we started 15 years ago.”
“This is a critical time to connect the dots and build people’s power in order to save what we can, build 100 percent extremely low income housing and stop racist displacement, gentrification, evictions and massive homelessness,” she wrote.