A San Clemente Charity Finds Itself in Need of a Home

For more than five years, Family Assistance Ministries in San Clemente has been helping the less fortunate: the elderly on limited income, the working poor, the homeless, people in need of a little push getting through life’s rough patches.

They include Jan Cleaves, 47, who became homeless more than a year ago and sought refuge at the charity’s shelter on the edge of town.

There, Cleaves received job training and a hearing aid. She was nearly deaf, she said, which made it hard to find work. Today, Cleaves is a resident coordinator at the shelter and manager of the charity’s thrift store.

“I can’t say what I would have done without them,” she said.

Now, it is Family Assistance Ministries that runs the risk of being out on the street. The private nonprofit has outgrown the 950-square-foot office it rents downtown on El Camino Real.

The landlord said other tenants were complaining about the traffic and has given the organization until Jan. 30 to find another home, said Marie Toland, the group’s executive director.

“I know it was a tough decision for him to evict us,” said Toland, 51, a petite woman with twinkling eyes and a cheerful demeanor.

She said that Family Assistance Ministries, founded in 1999 by the late Ellen Gilchrist, a longtime San Clemente philanthropist, has become a victim of its own success. In four years, the charity’s operating budget has grown from $89,000 to $400,000, and the number of families and individuals it helps has jumped from 435 to 2,500.

Family Assistance Ministries doles out 300 to 500 bags of donated groceries a month from its downtown office.

The group also runs Gilchrist House, a 26-bed homeless shelter for women and children in north San Clemente, and a thrift store in another building downtown.

This year, the charity gave more than $150,000 to families to help with rent, utilities, clothing, prescription drugs and car repairs.

“They are basically our primary agency for helping the homeless and very-low-income families,” said Leslie Davies, housing coordinator for San Clemente.

Family Assistance Ministries also serves residents of San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel and Mission Viejo.

Davies said south Orange County’s image of wealth and multimillion-dollar homes sometimes masks the poverty. Nearly a quarter of the families in San Clemente earn less than $35,000 a year, she said.

For such families, making ends meet is becoming more difficult as the booming real estate market drives up rents.

Dalana Wolfe, a 30-year-old homemaker and mother of four, said her husband works full time as an electrician, but she couldn’t feed her family without the group’s help.

“It is a very different place than when my parents used to pay rent,” said Wolfe, who grew up in San Clemente.

On Friday, she was at the nonprofit’s office picking up groceries. Around her, the tiny office was jampacked with bags of food donated by a Trader Joe’s store, including bread, vegetables and juice.

Toland’s room was overflowing with toys that the charity had collected and distributed Saturday at the San Clemente Community Center, a Christmas event that draws dozens of needy children from the area every year.

Cleaves, however, may have gotten the biggest present of them all. Her turnaround story so inspired Renee Cox, a Family Assistance Ministries volunteer, that she donated her 1993 Bravada SUV to Cleaves on Friday.

“We are blessed, you know,” Toland said. “We just need a home.”