When Annette Culver first met her therapist at Father Joe’s Villages, she gave him just 15 minutes.
“I was very defiant, just waiting for him to make a wrong move. And I stayed the whole time, you know, the whole the whole hour talking to him,” she said.
Those 15 minutes turned into a couple of years of regular therapy sessions. Culver is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, depression and extreme paranoia. She said time with her therapist has helped her manage her mental illness
“I've dealt with that all my life, you know? So it's nice to have some control and to know what I'm facing and how to face it. I've got the tools to keep going on,” she said.
Culver’s therapist Marc Stevenson, director of behavioral health for Father Joe’s Villages, said she’s not alone. He said his team is now seeing about 200 more individuals and families in the first quarter of this year than they did during the same time last year.
That’s about a 25% increase in unhoused people seeking therapy.
“This issue with mental health and homelessness is not only persistent, but it's progressive,” Stevenson said. “When people are living in the mode of survival, they don’t have time to chase down resources. Sometimes they have to do what they need to do to stay safe, put something in their mouth and figure out a good place to sleep for the night.”
He said by combining housing, therapy and health care, the service provider removes some of the biggest barriers to recovery and reintegration. Things like transportation issues and access to consistent care.
“We don't know what our folks have been through before they got here. A lot of them might have had terrible experiences with certain service providers,” he said.
Research from UC San Diego shows only about 1 in 4 people who stayed in San Diego County shelters between 2018 and 2023 moved straight into permanent housing. Service providers who pair housing with health and social care are the most successful at helping people leave homelessness for good, researchers from the Homelessness Hub at UC San Diego found.
For Culver, the journey from survival to stability started with a small leap of faith and a therapist willing to listen. Now, she's in low-income housing, managing her mental health and sharing her success with other residents.
“I encourage people, I take walks and we talk, and I encourage people, you know, 'have you heard of Marc?'” she said.
Between January and March of this year, data from Father Joe’s shows 86 individuals moved from shelter to permanent housing — that’s more than 10% higher than last year during the same time period when 77 made that transition.
The organization is expanding its mental health services to meet growing demand.
