Press conference for Monday, June 14, 8:30 am

Download full press packet with press release, timeline, contact information for speakers and experts, and prior coverage.

WHAT: Press Conference RE: Sale of Children’s Village to Speculators
Leaves Young Children Out in the Cold

WHEN: Monday, June 14, 2010, 8:30 a.m.

WHERE: Children’s Village Child Development Center (front sidewalk on 10th St.)
250 10th Street (between Howard/Folsom)
San Francisco, CA

WHO: Children’s Village parents, SEED (Supporting Early Experience and
Development – nonprofit group formed to save Children’s Village)

WHY: Children’s Village, an award-winning child development center serving children 3 months to 5 years, facing imminent closure – Catholic Charities discontinues program as San Francisco Archdiocese sells property to developers. Displaced families receive no support and children have no place to go. In a city where less than half the need for child-care services is met, Catholic Charities is closing its award-winning Child Development Center in SOMA so the Archdiocese can hand the facility over to speculators who are purchasing the property to develop the site.

Children’s Village provides vital day care, early childhood education and family support services to 110 children from 100 families, over half low-income and all reflecting the city’s cultural and socioeconomic diversity. Young children are the hardest to place in care facilities where in San Francisco only 49% of child care needs for children of all ages is met. Waiting lists of eighteen months to two years are the norm, putting extreme hardships on families struggling to stay and raise children in the City.

The San Francisco Archdiocese owns the St. Joseph’s campus where Children’s Village is located. Catholic Charities, the charitable arm of the Archdiocese, oversees Children’s Village as one of its programs. The Archdiocese is giving Catholic Charities one million dollars to close the program down and deliver the facility vacant. Catholic Charities has announced it will close the Center by end of August 2010 with reduced staffing through the summer. No transition plan or child care slots have been provided for the children Children’s Village serves. Catholic Charities plans to put toys and fixtures into storage while families are left without care. Although Catholic Charities recently announced it will open another facility near-by, it won’t be available for at least another year, with no guaranteed slots for displaced Children’s Village families even then. Therefore the Children’s Village families have been left to fend for themselves.

In addition, the property has just been sold to real estate broker Chris Harney of HC&M and Tom Murphy of SFRents who have also been unwilling to work out a transition plan for the parents, and declined to lease the property to them at market rates, even though the site’s future is uncertain. Adjacent St. Joseph’s Church, a historic vacant landmark, is in need of extensive seismic retrofitting.

In order to save Children’s Village, parents have formed SEED (Supporting Early Experience and Development), an independent non-profit organization, and created a sustainable plan to continue the Center at its current location, but that plan has been ignored by the current and future property owners.

“We prefer to stay here and have worked the financials out for that, or would alternatively rent the space in the interim given time to transition elsewhere, but they’re not interested in either,” said Megan Laurance, a mother of two children in the program. “At this point it looks like their plan is to kick these kids to the curb with no transition and no alternatives.”

“Children’s Village is a critical resource for San Francisco’s working families. A lease would allow the program to continue to operate, enabling families to work, and also gives time for a proper transition to an alternative location without impeding the investors’ plan for the site…we should be working towards that end.” explained Mardi Lucich, Citywide Child Care Administrator at the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families.

In fact, San Francisco has invested nearly $2 million dollars into Children’s Village’s state-of-the-art child care facility – a facility that supports a thriving community with a long waiting list of parents eager to enroll their young children. The City’s investment, in a time of economic hardship and huge budget deficits, will be squandered as developers take over the site and families are left to wonder if it’s finally time to leave the City and raise their children elsewhere.

Is this consistent with Catholic Charities’ mission of “supporting, stabilizing and strengthening families in our community”? Is it right for the Archdiocese to allow our city’s youngest children, many our most vulnerable, to be left with no one to care for them? Should the city’s investments be squandered and 110 needed child-care slots be lost to speculators?

The parents, children and supporters of Children’s Village say a resounding “NO”. We urge you to attend our press conference (details above) to learn more about Children’s Village and to hear from parents and civic leaders supporting our cause.

Questions can be directed to Dee Dee Workman, 415-533-8130, deedee@workmansf.com

Children’s Village Website: http://www.cccyo.org/childrensvillage/index.htm

Save Children’s Village Website: http://savechildrensvillage.com/