Description

The Sixth Street Self-Help Center offers services for residents living along San Francisco’s Sixth Street Corridor. The community center, located at 169 Sixth Street (between Mission and Howard), is a place where people can safely tend to their primary needs: escaping the cold, resting free of traffic, noise, or harassment, or just using the restroom. Beyond that, it is a meeting ground where neighborhood residents struggling with homelessness and poverty can access services, connect with their community, and work to stabilize their lives. The Self-Help Center’s Case Management team provides individualized counseling and care planning for those who are in need of longer-term services. This includes assistance with processes necessary to secure benefits, such as General Assistance, Social Security Income, State Disability and Veteran’s Benefits; emergency, transitional, and permanent housing; substance use counseling and access to treatment programs. Each year, more than 6,000 people access the Self-Help Center’s peer-based support groups, providing them an avenue for stability and connection to the community. Importantly, these groups facilitate transitions to employment and/or permanent housing. These weekly support groups apply a harm reduction approach that allows people to access services during periods of active substance use. In addition, the Sixth Street Self-Help Center’s Employment Resource Center provides vocational resources for job-seekers. Staff and volunteers work with individuals to address whatever is standing between them and stable employment. Like its Tenderloin counterpart, the drop-in center also partners with the Harm Reduction Therapy Center to offer drop-in mental health and substance use counseling on-site daily, as well as free massage and healing touch through our partnership with the Care Through Touch Institute.