A Wonderful Homeless Shelter Where I Spent 18 Months of my

Our Mission:   InnVision is a primary gateway for homeless families and individuals seeking shelter and resources that lead to self-sufficiency.  Our comprehensive system of care promotes self-worth and dignity at multiple facilities throughout Silicon Valley, including shelters, longer-term housing options and service centers, each equipped to meet emergency and transitional needs of diverse, at-risk people.     InnVision is...the Way Home!                                                                                               March 2012 Dear Elena,      A client recently sent me one of the most meaningful messages I have ever received. I'd like to share it with you.   ************  Dear Christine, I have been a resident of InnVision's Permanent Housing program in Redwood City for over a year now. I just want to thank you and InnVision for this tremendous blessing on my life. I became homeless in 2004 after multiple back injuries that brought on a separation with my wife and eventually divorce. I was too proud to file for disability, and I was no kind of lawyer to take on the divorce lawyers and workers' comp lawyers (at the same time). I became homeless not because of alcoholism, drugs, or dysfunction, but because I just could not overcome the circumstances of my life.   I enrolled in and completed a 12-month vocational degree at Heald Business College, Fresno to get in, get out, and get ahead, but with my open workers' comp case, I couldn't get a job even with their lifetime job placement. I fell into shame and depression and slowly began secluding myself from the world until my second eviction in 2004. I had had so much bad news for so many years and tried so hard to overcome my circumstances by myself, but I was grasping for straws: divorced, bankrupt, disabled, unemployed, unemployable and hoping no one would notice. Over time the years of rejection and hopelessness had worn me down until in 2009 I started drinking (after 17 years of sobriety) and spiraled to the point of a suicide attempt on my birthday 2009. That's when I met InnVision. I was released form the psych ward of the hospital and placed in a mental health bed at the Clara-Mateo Shelter. The first night I was there, Lisa Douglas came to speak at the house meeting, offering to help people apply for their SSI. I worked with her starting in December 2009 and four months later my claim was approved! I got my first check in May 2010 and by the end of the year, Jill, Debra and Jeff from the Opportunity Center helped get me into this InnVision-supported apartment.    I cannot tell you how grateful, thankful, and blessed I am or how emotional I get after I catch myself dwelling in my past and realize that part of my life has actually ended. Even after a year, my thoughts keep falling back into that cloud of despair, like my brain had been trained to think that way for the rest of my life. Now a year later I still wake up in the morning wondering where I am but realizing that I'm waking up in my home with my stuff and my own key. I can't even tell you how this jump starts my heart and my spirit each day. I am so jazzed with my new home that most days I don't even want to leave to go anywhere, I enjoy it so much. Thank you for your dedication and devotion to all of us who need you so much. It could never be measured, it could never be named, and could never possibly be repaid. Today I am filled with a limitless aspiration, a life and spirit in me that was lost forever. Those bitter thoughts of failure and regret, "Who cares?", "Why does it matter?" fade more every day. While I am not the man that I was, I am on my way and I thank you from the bottom of my beaten heart. Thank you all, Dale

My Life In Homeless Shelters

Last night I made a $100 contribution to Inn Visions. This is a non-profit foundations that runs shelters for the homeless, battered women, etc. From September, 1996 to September,1997, and from August, 1998 to September 1998 and from March , 1999, to July 4, 1999, I lived in some of their homeless shelters. It was a low point in my life. When I left I got furniture from Catholic charities so that I could furnish a humble apartment. It's 11 years alter and we still have some of the furniture. I know what ahrd times are.