A Mission-based nonprofit has won a five-year $6 million federal grant to fund a variety of different health programs for Native American, Latinx and Black communities in the Mission.
Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas will receive $1.25 million from the National Institutes of Health for the first fiscal year of the five-year period, the NIH announced in September.
CANA will use the funds in four different areas: First, the nonprofit will fund mental health, career service and other wellness programs in Mission affordable-housing buildings. As part of the grant, it will test the efficacy of those programs.
It will begin with two housing projects: One is the Village, a six-story building at 80 Julian Ave., which will include a center for health services and cultural connections, and is operated by the Indigenous-run organization Friendship House. The complex is slated to open in 2025.
Another project, the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Arts Healing Center, is part of an 130-unit affordable housing complex at 681 Florida St. — also underway and expected to open in 2024.
The aim is to show how designated housing for people in need of rehabilitation, paired with services such as wellness practices, social work and career support, can better help formerly homeless residents get back on their feet.
“These two are the guinea pigs of this research,” said Paul Flores, the creator of the project — named Somos Esenciales — and one of its research leads. “We need to show what we have in San Francisco right now is worthy of more investment.”
Beyond rental housing, the project also aims to put people on the path to purchase their own homes by introducing financial literacy resources, such as “how to even go to the bank and ask for the loan.”
Second, the grant will fund a pilot program to fill empty Mission District storefronts with business owners, “whether it’s selling fruit on the street or printing your own T-shirts,” said Flores, in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
This idea is particularly relevant now, as Supervisor Hillary Ronen recently announced a ban on both permitted and unpermitted sidewalk vendors selling along the Mission corridor, starting in early November.
“Our intervention isn’t about forcing them off the street,” Flores said. “It’s about helping them get the initial down payments to be able to rent space, and also create a little bit of education around how to run a business.”
Third, CANA hopes to increase food access by experimenting with urban farming and unused land.
Pandemic-era food benefits expired early this year. San Franciscans are facing a hefty loss of food resources, and the Black, Latinx and Native American communities are taking the hit harder than others, spurring a hope to test out new ways of growing food.
“Now that the pandemic was supposedly over, they stopped funding food at the same levels, but people didn’t go back to work at the same levels. So there’s a deficit right there,” Flores said.
The project will address that deficit by working with organizations like the Mission Food Hub to transform unused parcels in the Bay Area. The group is looking at turning land in Golden Gate Park into farmland to grow beans, chili and avocados.
Finally, the project will also fund cultural practices and indigenous healing at Friendship House, including making teas, murals and music, as well as gardening and knitting to improve mental health.
In 2021, CANA found that an initial group of volunteers at the Mission Food Hub, an outpost of the Food Bank in the neighborhood, were lowriders from the neighborhood, which made Flores realize how cultural practices like lowriding — “driving and working on their cars, and trying to keep the tradition alive” — kept people “sane and grounded” during a time of crisis.
“We have to maintain those practices, even when the pandemic isn’t around,” Flores said. “Because this probably won’t be the last crisis we face.”
The grant will be renewed annually for at least five years, and up to 10 years, Flores said.
CANA will not work alone. The group will distribute the money to partner organizations, such as the Friendship House and the Mission Food Hub, to implement its plans, while research teams at UCSF and UC Riverside will assess whether these social interventions improve health outcomes.
“That does sound like a ‘Duh;’ of course you’re gonna feel less stressed if people have adequate housing and food security,” said Dr. Lisa Fortuna, professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside, and lead researcher of the grant. “But here’s a way to actually do that experiment, so to speak.”
“The question is, if we actually make strategic changes in the community, do we push a real change in rates of stress-related illnesses?” Fortuna said. “And in what way? Does it reduce mental stress just as much as other diseases? Does it help kids in a different way than adults?”
