Background

PFC Farms Homeless to Wholeness (www.HomelessToWholeness.org) is a proven agriculture based  intervention program offering vulnerable individuals and families access to a career in agriculture and culinary industry. Infusing agriculture based training and activities assist with a successful outcome of obtaining affordable housing and services to help them overcome complex challenges such as homelessness, mental illness, physical disabilities and substance use.

With over 200 million dollars put into transitional support services for the homeless or disadvantaged community, PFC Farms bridges the gap and supports a well-established history of leveraging supportive housing to improve the lives of thousands who want stability, autonomy and dignity. More recently, PFC Farms Homeless to Wholeness Program led the way in demonstrating the strong link between agriculture, stable housing and health outcomes by reinvesting nearly $200 thousand dollars million into its farm and food distribution system to create supportive agriculture-based housing solutions targeted for those individuals that are able to work in the agriculture or culinary field by demonstrating their ability to commit to a transitional independent living plan. In spite of these far-sighted initiatives and achieved short term goals, there is not nearly enough land accessible to PFC Farms to meet the record-level of need for transitioning our disadvantaged community from being on the streets into productive citizens of a growing society. PFC Farms Cooperative Agriculture Agreements bridges this gap to grow on accessible land in order to improve the quality of life. California alone is it estimated four out of every five people found eligible for supportive housing have to remain in shelter or on the street because of the lack of available resources, workforce-based solutions, funding, food, and units available to live in. Experts and advocates agree efforts to increase access to safe and affordable housing could be greatly enhanced if driven by workforce-based solutions and the ability to access quality food. Until now, policymakers, advocates, developers and other key housing stakeholders throughout various systems lacked accessible transitional agriculture-based programs, farms able to grow without limitations and adequate data to better assess the needs of those classified as homeless or severely disadvantaged individuals. This summarized report establishes the foundation on which we can continue to build such a diverse portfolio to present a Homeless to Wholeness program to greatly enhance strategic planning and resource allocation to increase the supply of supportive housing solutions with an agriculture emphasis.

Data Collection Challenges

Although this Executive Summary forms the nucleus to move forward, PFC Farms Homeless to Wholeness program faces several obstacles in collecting streamline independent living plan solutions from public and private providers. No uniform data exists to comprehensively assess todays homeless plan to present it self as a solution for the future. Supportive housing services need at either the regional or statewide agriculture-based support and there is no centralized model to collect such numbers and enforce commonality in programs that are designed for the homeless or disadvantaged.  State and local agencies collect their own diagnosis-specific data on the homeless populations they serve without support from the agriculture industry. As such, governmental agencies, providers and housing advocates must rely on a patchwork solutions and data that often fail to capture an individual who is hard working and creative in his or her own unique way. This leads to crossing over multiple systems and a mass high cost to public agencies attempting to transition the person or persons into a productive citizen of our society. As a result, no accurate solutions for long-term, permanent, or temporary housing can be successfully achieved when working with the homeless or disadvantaged population.