San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Nurse gets rent aid for time between jobs
As with many people, Stefán Christenberry’s woes began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Laid off from his job as a home care nurse two years ago, Christenberry said he panicked and took the first nursing job he could find.
That role didn’t work out, and he again found himself out of work last summer. He was quickly running out of money as he waited on back pay from his former employer that he wasn’t sure would ever come.
In the meantime, the rent on his apartment in San Pablo was due. His applications for unemployment and Social Security benefits were both pending, and his cash reserves were all but gone.
“I was freaking out,” Christenberry said. “I’d been at this housing for a year and a half. I always paid on time. All I can think of is, ‘I’m going to be on the street.’ ”
During that time, he said, his car was also repossessed.
Christenberry, who has devoted his career to nursing and caregiving for more than 30 years, found himself in a situation where he was now the one in need of a helping hand. He reached out to a local church in San Pablo for assistance, but to no avail.
Then he applied for assistance from the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, a charity working throughout the year to prevent homelessness and hunger across the Bay Area’s nine counties. All donations directly help people in need.
Christenberry asked for just a month of rent to get him through. In the end, he got more than that.
“I had no idea if I was going to get it,” said Christenberry, who has spent much of his life giving to others, including 10 years singing in the choir at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.
“They were going to pay a month’s rent. They paid two,” Christenberry said. “I was in tears.”
“A lot of our clients are in transition between one job or another,” said Cynthia Smith, the supervisor for the unit that manages Season of Sharing for Contra Costa County and who took Christenberry’s call.
Many Season of Sharing applicants are in the process of applying for other benefits, or like Christenberry, have already sought other help and are waiting on word, Smith said. Many are running the financial numbers to see if they can make it to the end of the month.
“He was in this transitionary period, and he had never asked for help before,” Smith said. Now, he’s “able to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she added. “This is just buying him some time, giving him some breathing room, and that’s what Season of Sharing is really for.”
That has come to fruition for Christenberry, if slowly.
He said he was able to file the paperwork to receive Social Security benefits, and has been getting a small stipend, but not enough to cover his rent or living expenses. After the payments covering two months of rent in the fall from Season of Sharing, he was able to get a part-time job working as a home care nurse.
He said in November that he was still in a challenging situation financially.
“I cannot have this phobia every time it’s the first of the month,” he said, worrying that he may not be able to cover rent. “I can’t keep reliving September and October again. I’m a human being. I’m not a machine.”
Then in December, Christenberry’s streak of hard luck seemed to end.
His resume of caregiving expertise caught the attention of a recruiter, and he got a full-time offer from the Native American Health Center, a nonprofit with locations in San Francisco and the East Bay.
“It’s a (six-month) contract, but I always believe anything is possible,” Christenberry, who is half Cherokee, said in a text message.
Now, instead of fearing catastrophe, he said, he tries to focus on what’s ahead. “I just exceed to conquer the task, and then it’s all in the past,” Christenberry wrote.