Maya Gwynn
With KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn with Black Perspectives IE, a show where we learn about the amazing things members of the Black community are doing in the Inland Empire. My guest today is Claire Jefferson-Glipa, Executive Director of Family Promise. Thank you so much for being here today.
Claire Jefferson-Glipa
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Maya
We appreciate it. To start off can you share a bit about Family Promise and its mission?
ClaireYeah, I'd be happy to. So, Family Promise of Riverside, we are an organization determined to end homelessness one family at a time, and so we specifically serve unhoused children and their families through emergency shelter and supporting folks “getting home.”
In addition, once our families are housed, we support them for two more years to help them remain stably housed.
Maya
Wow. And on the Family Promise website, it says that in the city of Riverside, more than 2,700 children are experiencing homelessness. After doing my math, that's around 3.5% of all children in the entire city. In your opinion, how did this come to be?
Claire
So first that data is, unfortunately, three years ago data. Now we're close to 4,000 kids in the city experiencing homelessness, and it's a real problem that we're not talking about. It's particularly scary because while homelessness is top three on every political pundit’s agenda, we're not talking about the large growth of child homelessness, particularly family homelessness. Not just in, you know, Riverside, but in the country writ large. And if we don't look at a problem correctly, it's really hard to address it. And so HUD, our department, federal department, that kind of tracks extreme homelessness, what we would consider chronic homelessness, two years ago reported an 18% growth in family homelessness, right, in 2023. Their numbers came in in 2024 a 39.4% increase, on top of that 18%. The largest growing population of unhoused individuals in the United States are children under the age of 18, and we're not talking about it.
Maya
Why do you think that is?
Claire
Why we aren't talking about it?
Maya
Yes.
Claire
Um, because it's really easy to point at that guy sleeping on the park bench. Um, and our families work really hard to stay out of sight because they want to keep custody of their children. And so I'll just be honest, most political pundits look for easy issues, right? They're dealing with the issues that folks are going to yell and scream at them about. So, businesses are yelling and screaming at them about folks sleeping in front of their businesses or defecating in, you know, public spaces. And so that's what rises to the top of their attention, and it's really easy to find a simple solution, right? Let's just make sleeping and encampments illegal. Simple solution. Check, it's done, versus looking at the holistic solution that person that you're seeing is at the end of a spectrum of homelessness. What is contributing to getting there. How are we creating a system of winners and losers that are causing groups of individuals to not have the ability to afford the basic need of shelter? I think in addition, we as humans like to avert what makes us uncomfortable.
Maya
Absolutely.
Claire
And so when we see an individual lying on the street, it should rock us to our core as humans, right? It should shake our humanity. We know intrinsically that an individual should not be sleeping on the bare ground, and instead of addressing that within our system and driving ideas and thought processes to up end what I'll say is toxic capitalism that is leading to these outcomes. It's just easy to point at issues like mental health, substance abuse, right? So that then I can “other” that individual and so I don't have to actually think about the way in which I am also a part of that system, equally culpable and equally experiencing, possibly down the line, that same outcome?
Maya
Yeah, you perfectly led into my next question. What's your, what are some of the most common misconceptions people have about unhoused individuals, and how does Family Promise challenge those misconceptions?
Claire
That's a great question. So, I think in general, most people believe that there was a large set of choices that this person took. They got on a path, and they followed that path because of selfishness, because of lack of discipline, because of lack of financial literacy, because of mental illness or because of substance abuse that led someone to be homeless. And sometimes that's the case. But we find that substance abuse is no different in the percentages in our unhoused population as our housed population. Mental illness, there are not different, like vast arrays of more unhoused individuals struggling with mental health than those who are housed, right? We just happen to see those folks because they don't have a bathroom to go in and cry, they don't have a closet to go in and shoot up in, or a couch to lay on and get drunk on, right? So we see it more.
Maya
Yeah, well said. So we're gonna move into our rapid fire portion.
Claire
Okay.
Maya
So just the first thing that comes to your mind.
Claire
Oh goodness, Okay.
Maya
No wrong answers. All right. If your work had a theme song, what would it be?
Claire
Oh, shoot, rapid fire? I don’t know, girl! Um, “We Gon Be All Right.”
Maya
Oh, I love it. Kendrick Lamar? I love it. You're not the first person to say that. All right, if you had to teach a master class or give a TED talk in a random skill, it could be something serious or something silly. What would it be?
Claire
Um, growing your own tea.
Maya
Oh, I love that. That's amazing. And what's your favorite Inland Empire restaurant, or like a landmark that reminds you of the IE.
Claire
Beignet Spot is like the bomb!
Maya
Where's that?
Claire
In Riverside, downtown, Riverside.
Maya
Oh, wow. Okay. It's called Beignet Spot?
Claire
Yes, ma'am. Like, real deal, beignets with chicory coffee. I got people from Louisiana, so it's like, Oh…
Maya
It's my favorite city. New Orleans is my favorite city.
Claire
Oh, then you have to go. Girl, the jambalaya fries.
Maya
Okay, all right. And how can people keep up with your work and support you?
Claire
Yeah, the best way to connect with us. We're on Instagram and Facebook. Yeah, @familypromiseofriverside. Okay, you can always email family@fpriverside.org and ask to join our newsletter. And then our website, fpriverside.org also has our donation link. They're also in the links in our bio, also on Instagram, but we would love folks to come and engage.
Maya
Thank you so much for being here. This was such a good topic to talk about and something that needs to be talked about more. I really appreciate you being here.
Claire Jefferson-Glipa
Thank you.
Maya Gwynn
Claire Jefferson-Glipa is the Executive Director of Family Promise. Support for this segment comes from the Black Equity Fund at IECF, advancing racial equity and supporting long term investments in black led organizations in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Join us again next week for Black Perspectives IE. For KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn. Thank you.
