Innovative 10-Year Partnership Addresses Homeless Mental Health

Merger creates decade of Permanent Supportive Housing Solutions

Since 1990, Jamboree has been Building for Good – our model of affordable housing with life-enhancing resident services that transform lives and strengthen communities. Our corporate strategy consistently includes the strengths and expertise of partnerships to envision and create new solutions.

In 2020, Jamboree marked the 10-year anniversary of its merger with HOMES, Inc. (Helping Our Mentally Ill Experience Success), a nonprofit dedicated to providing housing and support for people with psychiatric disabilities. In the fight to end chronic homelessness, positively addressing mental illness continues to be an important factor, and the HOMES merger is a success story about the power of collaboration to create significant change.

Partnership for good

In 2008, HOMES was a leading nonprofit provider of housing with supportive services, with a 25-year history of serving homeless people with psychiatric disabilities. At a time of economic downturn, Jamboree partnered with HOMES to develop Diamond Apartment Homes in Anaheim, CA – which marked 10 years of success in 2019 – proving to be a cost-effective and permanent solution in the fight to end long-term homelessness.

Jamboree’s merger with HOMES in 2010 became a catalyst to create a remarkable hybrid of Permanent Supportive Housing. This merger has become vitally important to advancing Orange County’s quest to end chronic homelessness with the necessary funding and development expertise. HOMES originally owned Jackson Aisle and six houses that provided independent living for 62 residents living with mental health diagnoses. With a bent for action with compassion, Helen Cameron – then Executive Director of HOMES – began to shape a larger conversation for Jamboree as a long-time homeless advocate and as part of the Jamboree staff team.

Partnership for growth

Today, Jamboree is a statewide leader and Orange County’s largest developer of Permanent Supportive Housing with services – a property portfolio that includes 270 units with another 179 units in the development pipeline, a staff team of nine dedicated specifically to this unique housing and services model and our special needs residents, and 18 supportive service partners.

Partnerships are key to expanding our vision to integrate supportive housing into new affordable housing communities across the state.
  • With the City of Sacramento and its Redevelopment and Housing Agency, Jamboree transformed the historical 1928 Hotel Berry just blocks from the State Capitol into 105 studio apartments for those formerly homeless.
  • Our partnership with St. Joseph’s Hospital takes crisis patients from the emergency department into recovery housing at our Anaheim House, before stabilizing in permanent housing.
  • Jamboree developed Heroes Landing with the City of Santa Ana. It’s Orange County’s largest housing development exclusively for veterans, home to 75 veterans and the Heroes Landing Community Collaborative. All in one place, this network brings together leading veterans service agencies to support residents as well as veterans throughout the community.
  • Providence St. Joseph Health provided financial assistance and construction has begun on OC’s first motel conversion. The City of Anaheim and Jamboree wrote a new ordinance so that this former Econo Lodge will become more permanent housing for veterans, individuals with mental illness, and those formerly homeless.

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