SAN DIEGO — As she looked across the room at the shelter where she and her baby once slept on a mattress on the floor, Tiffany Newby began to tear up.
“We used to sleep back there,” said Newby, a program manager and supervisor at the San Diego Rescue Mission.
Newby wasn’t fighting back tears at the memory, but at the improvements that have been made to the mission’s Nueva Vida Haven since she stayed in it about 10 years ago.
“The beds are amazing, and I love the kids’ corner,” she said about the recent improvements. “The kids have chalkboard walls and toys to play with. It’s just awesome.”
The San Diego Rescue Mission, 120 Elm St., is opening its doors to the public Saturday afternoon to reveal the results of an August fundraiser that renovated an emergency shelter for women and children.
Like many who have gone through the mission’s rehabilitation program, Newby said her life has turned around since she first showed up with a three-month-old son.
Recently released from prison at the time, Newby had been repeatedly riding the trolley with her baby just to have a place to sleep after being turned away from a shelter for violating curfew.
Arriving at the mission in 2006 on her 35th birthday, she said she was taken in without question.
“You mean I can just show up?” she remember asking someone who referred her to the mission.
The mission had been in several downtown locations before moving into the former Harbor View Hospital on the corner of Elm Street and 2nd Avenue in 2004.
Herb Johnson, president and CEO of the mission, said the first years in the hospital were lean, and about 30 percent of the building was leased to Volunteers of America and other tenants.
“When we moved in, we could barely afford to be here,” Johnson said, recalling the early days at the location.
Vice President of Development Michael Johnson said the mission could only provide mattresses for the emergency shelter.
“Everything was on the ground,” he said. “Mattress next to mattress, person next to person. If we had to squeeze in more people, we put down more mattresses.”
In recognition of its 60th anniversary last August, the Rescue Mission held a casino night as a nod to its original location in a downtown card shop. The event raised $135,000, enough to fund the renovations to Nueva Vida Haven, which included installing a new floor and raising the ceiling one foot to allow for new bunk beds.
“We’ve reduced the numbers in here a little bit and made it considerably more humane,” Herb Johnson said.
The mission is licensed for 60 people but can take in more in bad weather or if the San Diego Police’s Homeless Outreach Team brings in a woman with a child who have no place else to go.
The new shelter also has a separate room with a crib and a few beds for mothers with young children or children who have autism and need a quieter environment. On Thursday, Newby said the shelter was expecting a woman with a one-day-old baby that night.
A children’s corner is filled with play things and a toy kitchen for the young ones and computer stations for their mothers.
Besides Nueva Vida Haven, the mission also operates 12-month residential program for men and a separate one for women and children, transitional housing, a children’s center, recuperative care, work therapy and an outpatient therapy clinic.
Newby said her life began to change shortly after coming to the shelter and entering the rehabilitation program.
“Two months into the program was when I decided I wanted to go to college,” said Newby, who is working on a master’s in psychology with plans to earn a doctorate.
“When you’re homeless and in the legal system and living the lifestyle that goes with it, you opinions and thoughts are different than when you’re able to get into a place like NVH (Nueva Vida Haven),” she said about her transition.
“Tiffay’s story is amazing,” said Dr. Nikki Watkins, vice president of clinical programs. “But it takes a lot of personal work as well. I would say Tiffany took it and ran with it.”
The shelter is open for women and children from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, and never closed during the renovation.
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Source: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/
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