San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Reunited family has much to celebrate for Christmas
“We’re going to be
together as just our family, just us,
for the first time in so many years.”
Claudia Arevalos
There are six people on a hill overlooking the bay in the south part of San Francisco who don’t expect presents this Christmas morning — even though they’ve got two decorated Christmas trees in their apartment, the littlest among them believe in Santa Claus, and they all gave toys to charity last week.
So why don’t they expect presents? Because they’ve already gotten the only thing they really, really wanted this holiday: A home.
Last year, Claudia Arevalos and her partner, Ricardo Mendoza, were in a tent on a windblown corner of the Bayview neighborhood, and their four children slept on couches and doubled-up beds in their grandparents’ small house. Arevalos and Mendoza had been on that corner in that tent, hooked on methamphetamine, for five years while their parents and children prayed every Christmas they would shake the drugs and rejoin housed society.
Their prayers got answered just before fall when the couple became drug free and moved into a three-bedroom apartment with a government rent subsidy voucher. The flat is 10 minutes from their old tent, but on a pretty rise of winding streets with a tree-studded view of the southern hills and bay waters.
“We feel so very blessed, and the only thing we wanted for Christmas was this apartment, a place to be with our children,” Arevalos, 31, said, stroking the head of 1-year-old Damian Mendoza as he slept in her lap. “Nothing else is as important as this.”
Mendoza, 30, pointed to a stencil they pasted over the kitchen entrance. It reads: “Stay
positive — work hard — make it happen.” That’s now the motto for their lives.
“If you put your mind to it, anything is possible,” he said. “Right, Martin?” he added, nodding to his 14year-old son.
Martin Chavez sat silent for a moment, contemplating. “There are times to play, and times to focus,” he said quietly. “And this time right now? I get to feel that same joy I had before my parents lived in the tent.”
His face erupted into a grin, and he gazed at his parents sitting together on the couch. “The gap in my heart is filled.”
The journey from stability five years ago to tent life to stability again was, as all homeless journeys are, an arduous one.
The couple were born and raised in San Francisco, but moved to Georgia in their early 20s so Mendoza could take a factory job building jet parts. Arevalos managed a gas station. Then in 2016 they moved back to be nearer to family — and after taking waitressing and driving jobs, they fell into drug addiction.
They had three children at the time — Martin; Dariana Mendoza, now 8; and Destiny Mendoza, now 10 — and when the couple’s lives deteriorated into the street, the kids moved in with the grandparents in the Bayview.
The children visited the tent often. By all accounts, the parents dressed neatly, kept a clean camp and didn’t use drugs in front of the children. But the kids knew the score.
“It was sad for me, for all of us, that they were in a tent in that situation,” Martin said. “But I knew they would get inside some day. They didn’t stop seeing us, and they showed us they still loved us. They worked hard to get inside.”
The turning points came when Damian was born a year ago, and in the summer when Mendoza was arrested and did a
month in jail on drug charges before being released on probation. While behind bars, he took advantage of the services and shed his addiction.
“I came out clean, and I realized that with the new baby this was my — our — opportunity to get straight,” he said. “So that was it. Claudia I haven’t used (drugs) since.”
Last spring, the couple applied for and got an emergency housing voucher through Catholic Charities, hoping to get drug-free inside — but finding a landlord who would rent to them was hard. Over and over, they and their Catholic Charities
case manager were turned down, and their luck turned only in September, when they landed the apartment and moved in with all four kids, three dogs and a pet turtle.
The voucher was one of 906 issued to San Francisco in 2021 through the federal House America pandemic effort to bring unhoused people indoors, but the vouchers have been difficult to put into action. To date, a little under half of the vouchers issued to California have been used, and as of this month, San Francisco has activated 50% of its vouchers. All are supposed to be issued by September 2023.
“It’s always hard to find landlords who will take rental vouchers, and these EHVs are no exception,” said Jessica Lopez, the family’s Catholic Charities case manager. “A lot of people aren’t open-minded to working with a voucher, or they’re stereotyping the people getting the vouchers because of their situation, or their race or background.
“It comes down to this — are they willing to give
this family a shot? After a lot of rejections, we found a receptive landlord for this one. And I’ll tell you, this family looks good. The parents are clean, they have a whole new start, and they have great kids. I’m so happy for them.”
Catholic Charities provided the first month’s rent and security deposit, and it and other charities kicked in beds, tables, sheets and other supplies for moving in. With the voucher, the family only has to pay 30% of its income for rent.
Arevalos has part-time income tending the front desk at a housing complex through a city welfare program for now, and Mendoza watches the kids. Both are busily looking for fulltime work — she’d like a front desk gig, and he can do driving, warehouse or repair work.
“I am so thankful to the
Lord for them being in a home at last,” said Arevalos’ 62-year-old mother, Sonia Cervantes. “For so long, I kept crossing my fingers. The kids understood what was going on, and we tried as hard as we could to make life comfortable for them. But it was up to Claudia and Ricardo to make things happen. And they did.”
Even though the family doesn’t have money for presents, they did splurge $10 at a discount store on a small Christmas tree with white and blue ornaments for the living room. A relative gave them another one for the hallway, with lights. And last week, they all went to another discount store and spent $20 on a castle kinetic sand set and baby toys and took them to a Fire Department toy drive.
“It was a good cause, and we want to show our gratitude,” Mendoza said.
The youngest kids have managed to understand that Santa will be skipping them on Christmas morning because he already helped them in advance. And it helped that Catholic Charities gave the children gifts last week — a Lego set for Martin, a toy keyboard with drum sounds for Dariana, and more.
All that’s left now is for them to wake up Sunday and to see the one thing they most want to see: Each other.
“We’re going to be together as just our family, just us, for the first time in so many years,” Arevalos said. “I’m making tamales, and then we’re going to watch Christmas movies all day. That’s really all we need.”