Hayward selects operator for planned Housing Navigation Center for people who are homeless

HAYWARD, Calif., April 16, 2019—The City of Hayward announced today it has selected nonprofit agency Bay Area Community Services (BACS) to operate a planned Navigation Center to provide people living on the streets a pathway to permanent housing.

The new Hayward Housing Navigation Center is modeled on a BACS-run City of Berkeley program called STAIR, which provides service-rich transitional shelter for homeless people for up to six months and is successfully moving participants into permanent housing.  STAIR is an acronym drawn from the words “stability, navigation and respite.”

The Hayward Navigation Center is expected to open this winter on City property at Depot Road and Whitesell Street.  It will provide short-term shelter for 45 individuals at a time, intensive case management and housing-placement services focused on individuals living on the streets, in encampments or illegally inhabiting vacant buildings.  The Center will contain showers, laundry facilities, a place to eat and gather, and dormitory housing units with twin beds and movable privacy screens.  It will provide participants one meal a day and not accept walk-ins.  All participants will be selected by an outreach team and go through an in-take process.

In selecting BACS to operate the new Center, the City is partnering with an organization with a long track record of innovation in providing behavioral health, housing and aging services for teens, adults and older adults and their families in the East Bay.  To learn more visit, the BACS website online.

A community meeting, scheduled from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24, will give members of the public an opportunity to hear first-hand from City and BACS representatives and ask questions.  It will take place on the campus of Life Chiropractic College West, Room 110, 25001 Industrial Blvd., Hayward, CA, 94545.  Attendees are asked to enter at the Student Entrance off Clawiter Road.