Saint Vincent de Paul

NCCLF’s New Loan Program Benefits People with Mental Health and Drug Issues

For decades the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul of Alameda County (SVdP) has provided help and hope to thousands of the East Bay’s most vulnerable residents. At its Oakland Community Center, located just outside of the Uptown section of Oakland, SVdP serves thousands of people every year, through a variety of services that aim to help homeless and poor individuals meet basic needs, build self-sufficiency and, ultimately, break the cycle of poverty. The Oakland Community Center serves 1,000 free meals a day to those in need, provides basic health services, offers job and computer training, and provides a place of rest and respite for homeless women and children.

Recently, SVdP renovated a residential property located adjacent to the Oakland Community Center so that the building can be used as a 34-bed sober living transitional housing project. NCCLF helped SVdP refinance its short-term construction financing for the project with a $576,531 permanent mortgage. “Casa Maria,” as the building is now called, provides residential treatment services for men who are struggling with substance abuse and mental health challenges. The program’s clients are low-income, homeless, or at-risk of homelessness. Working in partnership with SVdP and the Alameda County Department of Behavioral Health, three important social service organizations operate in Casa Maria – Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), Options Recovery, Inc. and Lifelong. The program began serving clients in November 2010, and is expected to serve over 100 men annually.

SVdP created Casa Maria to expand its continuum of services, and also offers residents the opportunity to access the full range of services available at the Community Center. “We’ve created these great partnerships with the County, other nonprofits, and NCCLF who have really stepped up to help the people in our community that need it the most,” said Philip Arca, Executive Director at the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.

NCCLF recently introduced a long-term loan program that offers loans of up to ten years to better meet the needs of many of our borrowers. This was the ideal product for SVdP to meet their financial needs, and was structured to make loan payments affordable to the organization. “With the tough economic climate that we’ve been in, it’s encouraging to receive the support we needed with our project from NCCLF,” said Philip. “Finding a lender that was willing to structure a loan that worked for our organization would have been impossible anywhere else. But because NCCLF cares about what’s right for the community they helped us find a way to make this work.”

NCCLF is pleased to partner with SVdP and provide the financial tools to help those in need in the East Bay.