The population of the mountain region comprises just 2 percent of the total that makes up San Bernardino County. The Mountain Homeless Coalition has just two staff members and a few volunteers. And yet, one out of every four unhoused clients in the county from January through June 2024 was served by the MHC – 25 percent.
During that period, the MHC provided 394 nights in motels to local homeless individuals. Fourteen households were moved into permanent housing with MHC’s assistance. A total of 294 households benefited from MHC’s housing navigation. And 17 households were given rental assistance to prevent eviction.
Each number, the MHC said in their summer newsletter, “represents mountain neighbors who called in a moment of crisis, looking for help to find their way back to having a home or to remaining in their home without fear of losing it.”
They give the example of a local woman in her 80s who had been sleeping in her car for more than a year, with brief breaks on a couch or in a motel. Her fixed income would not allow for her to rent even a room. The MHC housing team found a studio apartment for her and are subsidizing her rent while another mountain nonprofit is working to increase her government income so she can make the payments herself.
A single father with three children had been living in a vacant mountain motel. When the new owners turned off the utilities and threatened to evict the family, MHC was able to move them into a two-bedroom unit they own in Big Bear.
MHC also provides food cards, gasoline vouchers, utility assistance, furniture and camping supplies to their clients.
President Sue Walker has been busy applying for grants. They have received $5,000 from IEHP, $7,000 from SCAN Health Plan to serve homeless seniors and $5,000 from the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. They anticipate receiving a grant from Kaiser Permanente. And they have been approved as one of the nonprofits that will share in 50 percent of the proceeds of the movie No Address, coming out this fall.
To subscribe to their newsletter, make a donation or learn how you can be a friend to a long-term homeless person, visit www.mountainhomelesscoalition.com.
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