Catholic Worker Hospitality House of San Bruno

THANK YOU, SCOUTS! Last Saturday, December 12, Catholic Worker Hospitality House received a massive collection of food from an area Scout troops in support of our work with those in need in our community. As part of the "Scouting for Food" food drive, Scouts from San Bruno based Cub Scout Pack 290 and Scout Troops 72 and 4172 participated in the food drive. They placed door hangers throughout San Bruno, Millbrae, South San Francisco and Daly City on Saturday, December 5th an...d then returned to those same houses on Saturday, December 12th to collect any food donations. The response to the Scouts plea was amazing! Residents of surrounding cities donated at least three times the amount as last year. They definitely kept the Scouts and their parents busy picking up and delivering the food. Thank you Scouts, parents, and area residents for the incredibly bountiful donation of food. Your kindness will help us continue serving those in need in the coming year. We also want to thank Troop 71 in San Bruno who were unable to participate in the food collection, but who made a very generous financial donation to Catholic Worker Hospitality House. See more

Read our Christmas Appeal which also includes information on how to help with our Christmas meal! http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org//christmas-appe/

A longtime volunteer at the Catholic Worker Hospitality, Judy Pena, has been placed in a care facility and can no longer come to the dining room. Read our tribute to our long time friend and volunteer. http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org//judy-pena-trib/

Join our email list! https://mailchi.mp/2484d9142118/cwhhsb-email-list

Fall Vacation Notice: At Catholic Worker Hospitality House we close our dining room and shelter for a week vacation several times a year. These times off provide a necessary respite which enables us to remain kind and compassionate (most of the time) to those we serve. It also gives us time to do some deep cleaning and light maintenance on the dining room and shelter. We will be closing for our Fall Vacation after the dining room service on Friday, October 23. The dining room and shelter will be closed for ten days until we reopen on Monday, November 2.

Read our October Update for news on our revised services during COVID-19. http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org//01/october-upd/

Read our September Appeal in which we celebrate twenty years of Pat Ford working as an overnight staff person at our homeless shelter. http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org//september-appe/

Read our August Update about how outreach workers from Lifemoves and Abode Housing Service are helping some of our guests find permanent and decent housing. http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org///august-update/

Read our July Update about our changed services during COVID and other news. http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org//07/18/july-upd/

We have a new staff person working at the dining room, Mike DiCampli. Mike is a long-time friend and volunteer at the dining room and shelter. While we do not expect him to replace Christine (who could!), he will be a great help to Peter and the shelter staff. Welcome, Mike! It’s good to have you on board.

What do you do with an in-home sauna kit that you don’t have space for in your home and is missing parts of the heating element? Well, that was the question I mulled over for several years. My wife loves to take a sauna but I don’t enjoy it that much as I grew up in a sauna called Houston, Texas. Several years ago a neighbor, knowing of my wife’s love of saunas, told us a friend of hers was giving away an in-home sauna kit. I said, No, thanks, but my wife said, Go get i...t. So guess what? I got it and put it in storage until we could figure out if it would work in our house. Upon further reflection it became clear that it would not work in our house as we didn’t have space for it and we realized parts of the heating element were missing. My first impulse was to trash it, but it was made of such beautiful cedar wood that I just couldn’t take it to the dump. So what to do with it? For three years it remained stored in the garage of one of our boarding homes. I generally ignored it. But on occasion I would think, What the hell do I do with this thing? Finally, it came to me: a meditation and prayer room. So a couple of weeks ago, with the help of a couple of guys from our boarding home, I built a foundation, put the panels together, and put on a roof with shingles. There is now a nice 5’ x 4’ room for prayer, meditation, or just to escape others. At the moment, I’m mainly the person who uses it, but occasionally one of the folks at the Second Ave house spends some time in it.

The vast majority of the donations we receive come from the faithful support of individual donors and church groups on our mailing list. This support enables us to keep our dining room, homeless shelter, and supportive housing projects going month after month and year after year. We simply couldn’t continue our daily work without this support. In order to ensure the steady and ongoing operation of our core service projects, we have to be judicious with how we spend these d...onations. We often receive requests for assistance from our guests that we normally just can’t help with. We hate saying no to folks, but we would hate even more to not keep the dining room and shelter operating. What to do? This spring we have received two very generous grants from Philanthropic Ventures Foundation to assist individuals in economic crisis caused by the COVID crisis. These grants have enabled us to assist those we serve in a variety of ways: medical bills, car repairs, new glasses, household goods for former shelter guests moving into their own apartments, and rental assistance. These grants enabled us to respond to the needs of those we serve in ways that would otherwise have been beyond our means. Due to job loss caused by the COVID shelter in place orders, there were two individuals and three families that would have become homeless without the rental assistance we were able to provide because of the grants we received from Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of this aid for those we serve. For the twenty-four years Catholic Worker Hospitality House has been in operation, whenever we wanted to start a new project or do something big Philanthropic Ventures Foundation has been there to make our dreams a reality. Some of the projects they supported have had a lasting effect on our work such as helping us purchase or rehab buildings used for supportive housing. Others have had short-lived or marginal success such as our idea for a daylabor program or funding a lawyer to assist our guest with their legal issues. The Foundation was started by Bill Somerville to operate with the same mindset as a venture capitalist supporting new and emerging endeavors. As with all investments some fail while others are wildly successful. You can’t have the success without risking failure. So we say thank you Philanthropic Ventures Foundation for all your very generous support over the years. Thank you for believing in us and taking risks to support our ideas for new ways to serve those in need in our community. Your support has had a powerful and lasting impact in the community we serve.

http://catholicworkerhospitalityhouse.org//06/01/june-app/

It is with much sadness that we announce that on May 5, 2020 long-time Catholic Worker Hospitality House staff member Christine Baker passed away from cancer. Many of you know Christine Baker from her work at the dining room over the past 20 years. In February she had an operation to remove a cancerous tumor in her abdomen. The surgery went well, but during surgery the doctors discovered that the cancer had metastasized to other internal organs. After the surgery her docto...rs told her they would be surprised if she ever left the hospital. They were wrong. After more than a month of recovery at Kaiser San Francisco Hospital she had a stay at the St. Francis Convalescent Pavilion in Daly City for further recovery. Then in early April she returned home as a hospice patient with around-the-clock care providers to make her final days as pleasant as possible. While not happy to have the hospice designation she was happy to return home, as she told me, I don’t want to die in a care facility. She got her wish. Christine will be greatly missed by all at Catholic Worker Hospitality House. We ask that you keep Christine, her family, and friends in your thoughts and prayers. See more

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT May 1, the International Day of Labor, is celebrated as the anniversary of the Catholic Worker Movement. On that day in 1933 Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, went to Union Square in New York City to distribute the first issue of The Catholic Worker newspaper. She has been inspired to start the paper by Peter Maurin, the other co-founder of the Catholic Worker. He was the person who gave Dorothy the vision ...Continue reading

In January 2020 the Catholic Worker Hospitality House received a $22,000 grant from the San Bruno Community Foundation in support of our homeless shelter. We are so thankful for their continued support of our work with those in need in the community.

VACATION NOTICE Normally, Catholic Worker Hospitality House closes the dining room and shelter for a week-long vacation several times a year. These times away provide a necessary respite which enables us remain kind and compassionate (most of the time) to those we serve. It also gives us time to do some deep cleaning and light maintenance on the dining room and shelter. However, due to the COVID Crisis causing widespread business and social service closures we feel it would... be an additional burden on our guests to take one of our regular vacations at this time. So we will be taking a semi-vacation. The week of April 20-24 the dining room will only be open on Tuesday, April 21 and Thursday, April 23. I will also be taking time away from the office during this time, so it will take me longer than usual to return phone calls. We will resume our regular schedule of serving of Monday through Friday on Monday, April 27. The shelter will remain open during this time. --Peter Stiehler, for all of us at Catholic Worker Hospitality House