5–YEAR PLAN
SOMOS ESENCIALES PROJECT OBJECTIVES & INITIATIVES
HEALTH & WELLNESS
We placed “Healing” in the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center’s name with intention. Both those who create culture, and their audiences, are transformed through the process of artistic expression. We are creating a space to develop an artistic voice for self expression that also provides significant emotional support and a means for artists and audiences to heal.
Shared business settings combined with business training and mentoring through programming at the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center and Friendship House will foster growth of entrepreneurs and will also act as a hedge against encroaching gentrification. This will be accomplished through a combination of approaches reflecting varied training opportunities offered by local licensed service providers. Trained health promotoras (a vocational opportunity) will implement healthcare navigation and wellness activities within the community and integrate at the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center, entrepreneurial and farming programs.
Mental health training and collaborative trainings will be supported by UC Riverside (UCR) Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and other mental health services community partners with cultural expertise, including la Cultural Cura (Culture Heals) initiatives of Instituto Familiar de La Raza.
Cultural Community Mental Health and Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center evaluation will be developed in collaboration with UCR researchers and providers. Although UCR health centers are geographically distant, they will not be experienced as culturally distant. As UR works towards inclusion, it will help coordinate services located within the community including in collaboration with the planned Mission District located Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center. This will be accomplished through a combination of approaches reflecting varied health care roles and training opportunities:
- peer promotoras
- clinical internships
- licensed service providers
HOUSING
HOME OWNERSHIP THROUGH WEALTH STABILIZATION
The centers of sustained economic, housing and community development and are driven by community priorities, assets, and culturally based resources.
Chronic rental poverty is transferred intergenerationally with reduced likelihood of homeownership over a lifetime. Yet with a financially stable home environment, families are more likely to navigate other obstacles.
The Wealth Building Through Home Ownership Initiative is a partnership between Friendship House, Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Américas (CANA), Pacific Housing West(PHW), the San Francisco Planning Department, the City of San Francsico Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and Mission Housing Corporation to develop 2,149 units of affordable and middle-income housing in San Francisco.
The programs will include:
- Home Ownership
- Affordable Housing (Ownership and Rental)
- Shelter for the Unhoused
- Supportive Services
- Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center
When the “dot com” internet commerce era of the mid-1990’s took hold of the region, bringing an infusion of new money into the empty warehouse spaces in the Mission District, leading to an increase in real estate value and rental prices. Many longtime residents were forced out when landlords abruptly raised the rents 200%.
Evictions increased, and cultural conflict became commonplace. 2010 saw a second wave, causing mass evictions and the loss of the Mission’s traditional working-class character. This has caused a wave of unsecure housing, resulting in people of color being over-represented among the unhoused.
- Black residents represent 35% of the unhoused yet are 5% of the population in San Francisco
- Latinos residents represent 22% of the unhoused and yet are 15% of the population in San Francisco
- Less than a quarter of Black, Latino, and Native American residents own their own homes.
In turn, lower income residents were almost three times more likely to experience serious psychological distress than higher income residents (15.19% vs. 5.31%) and poverty was associated with stress-related chronic illness (e.g., hypertension, substance use, and diabetes).
ECONOMIC WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
GREEN CULTURE ZONE
Shared business settings combined with business training and mentoring through programming at the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center and Friendship House will foster growth of entrepreneurs and will also act as a hedge against encroaching gentrification. This will be accomplished through a combination of approaches reflecting varied training opportunities offered by local licensed service providers
The Green Cultural Zone will be located in San Francisco’s two neighboring and overlapping cultural districts, the American Indian Cultural District and Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, within the Mission District. The Green Cultural Zone vision includes three integrated pathways to achieve environmental justice. This effort combats pollution at the neighborhood level, energizes small businesses along the way and creates a workforce prepared for an economy adapting to climate change and sustainability.
The Green Cultural Zone is an opportunity to envision a new Mission District reclaimed to create a neighborhood that reflects a clean, sustainable environment; centers the community’s Indigenous cultural roots, traditions and land-based values; prioritizes a culturally aligned small business community; and is an incubator for growing BIPOC entrepreneurs and workers prepared to enter the emerging green economy.
This effort features four core projects:
- Low-Traffic/Slow Streets Zone
- Culturally Aligned Small Business Sector
- Indigenous Tech Center
- Mission Food Hub
FOOD ACCESS
INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY GARDEN & CEREMONIAL SPACE
Many Latino people emigrated from rural, farming areas in Latin America, where for generations they have followed traditional, indigenous methods of farming and cultivated native crops like maize, beans, chili, pumpkin, and avocados. Now these Latino communities are in urban settings like San Francisco and have been detached from their traditional ways of interacting with mother earth. The traditional concept of food maintains that it is a sacred gift imbued with power from the natural world, strengthening mind, body, and spirit. We want our Latino community, elders, and youth to put their hands in the soil and experience the miracle of planting a seed and watching it grow, as they have done so for generations in Latin America.
Many of our indigenous ceremonies and cultural practices have deep ties to land, plants, and traditional foods. The urban farming and community garden initiatives in San Francisco will provide a space to reconnect and nurture our indigenous ways in the Americas. We will offer cooking classes as well as reinforce our connection with the earth through the agricultural and greening initiatives. Our farming initiative is a key part of a comprehensive workforce development plan that will prepare the Native American and Latino communities for career pathways to sustainable farming and farm management as well as other related careers in the food industry.
Outcomes:
- 3.5-acres of ancestral land returned to Native stewardship
- 8,000 lbs. of food and herbal plants/year