Service center marks grand opening

The Tracy Family Resource Center marked its grand opening on Tuesday with a ribbon cutting, inviting the Tracy Chamber of Commerce and local government leaders to the festivities.

It was an opportunity for the Community Partnership for Families of San Joaquin to showcase its new center, which has been open since April and replaces the center’s former offices on 10th Street, where Tracy Family Resource Center had been a fixture for the past 14 years.

David Eveler, the center’s Community Development Manager, said Tracy Family Resource Center, established by Sutter Tracy Hospital Foundation in 2005 to serve the community’s low-income residents and families in need, was priced out of the 10th Street location after the landlord raised the rent, and for a while the group worried about whether it could find a suitable new home.

“We searched high and low and didn’t find anything. We searched for 3 months and finally out of desperation we put it on Facebook with a set of praying hands, that we were looking for a new site,” Eveler said.

Good Shepherd Church, which has a chapel at the corner of Parker and Eaton avenues, owns the home at 236 W. Beverly Place and was using it as an office, but it was much more space than the church needed.

It turned out to be perfect for the Tracy Family Resource Center. Small rooms throughout the house serve as offices and counseling spaces, and bigger rooms are suitable for large gatherings and group meetings. A big back yard has allowed the site to host youth activities as well.

When asked what services the center provides, Eveler considers the vast variety of programs that people can connect with through the center, including food, housing, counseling, health care, employment training and more. For the center’s staff of four and a host of volunteers it all starts with case management.

“Our job is to steer them to whatever they’re lacking,” he said, adding that it starts with assessment of the types of services people need. “Case management is huge.”

Community Partnership for Families of San Joaquin runs six such center, including one in Lodi and four in Stockton. The partnership and local center are able to cast a wide net across Tracy, connecting a client base of nearly 1,000 local families each year to dozens of service providers, including government agencies, educational entities, health care providers, non-profit groups, charities and faith-based groups.

“We work with everybody. We don’t work with a specific group. We help everyone,” said Service Integration Coordinator Silvia Mejia, adding that the Beverly Place site serves as a landing spot for everyone who provides services.

“That’s the reason why I’m always out in the community. I’m trying to look for resources for these families, and making the connections with the non-profits, companies, so we can be able to provide resources,” she said. “If it wasn’t for those partners we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.”

Eveler added that the new location, a larger space than the center had on 10th Street, is itself a resource for its partner groups.

“It’s just giving groups and people opportunities to do the work,” he said. “Anything that supports our mission we let people use our facility.”

• Contact Bob Brownne at brownne@tracypress.com, or call 209-830-4227.