B - Gaps Analysis — San Leandro City Council, May 19, 2025

City of San Leandro Recreation and Human
Services Department
Human Services Gap Analysis
Produced by Urban Strategies Council
April 2017
2 Contents
List of Tables....................................................................................................................................................................... 3 List of Figures...................................................................................................................................................................... 3 List of Maps......................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Executive Summary: Key Findings.................................................................................................................................. 5 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................................................11 Section I: San Leandro in Context.................................................................................................................................12 The Suburbanization of Poverty ...........................................................................................................................12 The Housing Crisis..................................................................................................................................................13 A Small Community with Substantial Need........................................................................................................16 Section II: Demographics................................................................................................................................................21 Race/Ethnicity .........................................................................................................................................................21 Income Levels..........................................................................................................................................................27 Language ...................................................................................................................................................................29 Age .............................................................................................................................................................................31 Special Populations..................................................................................................................................................44 Section III: Services and Gaps in Services....................................................................................................................49 Location of Services................................................................................................................................................49 High-Level Mental and Behavioral Health Needs..............................................................................................53 Child and Family Enrollment in CalFresh...........................................................................................................54 Anticipated Cuts to the Safety Net .......................................................................................................................56 Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence ............................................................................................................57 Section IV: Recommendations...................................................................................................................................58 Appendix A...................................................................................................................................................................61 Human Services Located in San Leandro City Limits (2015)...........................................................................61 Appendix B ...................................................................................................................................................................64 List of Stakeholders Interviewed...........................................................................................................................64 Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................................................64 3 List of Tables
Table 1: Estimated Number and Percentage of Housing-Cost Burdened and Severely Housing-Cost Burdened Units ................................................................................................................................................14 Table 2: Number of San Leandro Residents below Poverty, by Race/Ethnicity (2011-15).................27 Table 3: Non-English Languages Spoken at Home among San Leandro Residents, 2010-14.............30 Table 4: Most Common Home Languages of English Learner and Fluent English Proficient Students.............................................................................................................................................................30 Table 5: San Leandro Population, by Age Group: Change from 2006-10 to 2010-14..........................33 Table 6: Number of San Leandro Residents below Poverty, by Age Group (2011-15)........................34 Table 7: San Leandro Unified School District Students Eligible for Free or Reduced-Price School Meals..................................................................................................................................................................37 Table 8: San Leandro Unified School District Students Enrolled in Special Education (District of Residence): December 2015...........................................................................................................................45 Table 9: San Leandro Unified School District Homeless Students, by Type of Residence (2015-16)48 Table 10: Services Located in San Leandro City Limits, by Type (2015) ................................................50 Table 11: Percentage of Patients from San Leandro by Zip Codes Served by Major Health Center Programs (2015)...............................................................................................................................................53 Table 12: Number and Percentage of Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits, San Leandro Hospital (2015).................................................................................................................................53 Table 13: Number of San Leandro Residents Participating in Alameda County Social Services Agency Programs (2013).................................................................................................................................55 Table 14: Domestic Violence-Related Calls for Assistance, San Leandro (2005-2014) ........................58 Table 15: SLUSD Students Who Reported Experiencing Dating Violence in the Past Year, by Grade Level (2011-2013) ............................................................................................................................................58 Table 16: Human Services Organizations in San Leandro City Limits, by Service Type (2015) .........62 List of Figures
Figure 1: Percentage of Population Below Poverty Level, Alameda County and Cities, 2011-15.......18 Figure 2: Median Household Income, Alameda County and Cities, 2011-15 ........................................19 Figure 3: Racial Composition of San Leandro Residents (2011-2015) ....................................................21 Figure 4: San Leandro Population by Race/Ethnicity (2006-2010 through 2010-2014) ......................22 Figure 5: San Leandro Asian Residents, by Ethnicity (2010-14)...............................................................26 Figure 6: Percentage of San Leandro Residents below Poverty, by Race/Ethnicity (2011-15) ...........26 Figure 7: Percentage of San Leandro Personal Income Tax Returns, by Income Level: 2014............28 Figure 8: Number of San Leandro Personal Income Tax Returns, by Income Level (2010-2014).....29 Figure 9: Percentage of San Leandro Residents Who Speak English Less than ‘Very Well,’ by Language Spoken at Home and Age Group (2010-2014)..........................................................................31 Figure 10: Population Age 65 and Over San Leandro (1970-2010).........................................................32 Figure 11: Population Under Age 5 San Leandro (1970-2010).................................................................32 Figure 12: Percentage of San Leandro Residents below Poverty Level, by Age Group (2011-15) .....34 Figure 13: Percentage of SLUSD Third Graders Who Met or Exceeded English Language Arts Standards, ..........................................................................................................................................................35 Figure 14: Percentage of SLUSD Third Graders Who Met or Exceeded English Language Arts Standards, ..........................................................................................................................................................36 Figure 15: San Leandro Unified School District Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity (2015-16) ................37 Figure 16: Number of Homeless Students in San Leandro Unified School District (2012-13 to 2015- 16).......................................................................................................................................................................49 4 Figure 17: Percentage of CalFresh Participants Under Age 18 (2013) ....................................................55 List of Maps
Map 1: Percentage of Renter Occupied Households, by block group, (2010 – 2014) ..........................15 Map 2: Total Population by Census Tract (2011 to 2015).........................................................................17 Map 3: Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months, in 2014 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars (2010 to 2014)..............................................................................................................................................................20 Map 4: Asian Population by Census Tract, from 2011 to 2015................................................................23 Map 5: Latino Population by Census Tract, from 2011 to 2015 ..............................................................24 Map 6: African American Population by Census Tract, from 2011 to 2015 ..........................................25 Map 7: Number of families with children under 18 years old, by block group, from 2010-2014 .......39 Map 8: Number of people aged 65 and above, by block group, (2010 – 2014).....................................43 Map 9: People with Disabilities (2010-14) ...................................................................................................46 Map 10: Locations of Services in San Leandro and Surrounding Area (2015-17).................................51 Map 11: Households Receiving Public Assistance in Past 12 Months, by Block Group (2010 to 2014) ..................................................................................................................................................................56 5 Executive Summary: Key Findings
A. Demographics
Poverty has increased. In San Leandro, the percentage of residents in poverty decreased from 6% in 1970 to 4.6% in 1980, nearly doubled between 1980 and 2010, to 8.6%, and then increased to

10.6% in 2011-15. From 2000 to 2011-15, the number of people in poverty in San Leandro rose from 5,000 to approximately 9,300.1
Poverty rates vary by race/ethnicity, with the highest rates among Latino, African American, and Asian residents of San Leandro, among whom roughly one in eight are below the poverty level.

Asians comprise the largest number in poverty (an estimated 3,335), followed by Latinos (estimated at just under 3,000). While the poverty rate of white residents is just over half the rate for Latino and African American residents, whites are the third-largest group of San Leandro residents in poverty (estimated at just over 1,400).

Language access is a key consideration in planning for and delivering human services. In San Leandro, more than half of the roughly 21,500 people who speak Asian or Pacific Island languages, and half of the estimated 16,800 who speak Spanish at home, speak English less than very well.

San Leandro children under 18 have the highest poverty rate among age groups (13.8%) and elders age 65 and over have the lowest poverty rate (8.2%). Children under 18 are the second-largest age group among people below the poverty level at just over 2,500, while the largest group of people in poverty are neither children nor elders, but adults ages 35-64 (nearly 3,700 people).

B. Populations Facing Gaps
Interviews with stakeholders, focus groups, and data analysis surfaced the needs of particularly vulnerable groups. The human services needs of these populations must be part of planning for and evaluating human services, both within the city and at the county level. i. Young Children
San Leandro’s kindergarteners are less likely than their peers in Alameda County to be ready for kindergarten. In San Leandro, and in the county as a whole, attending preschool is associated with higher levels of school readiness. However, only 50% of kindergarteners in SLUSD had attended preschool.
2 The partnership between the Library and the Recreation and Human Services

1 US Census 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 retrieved from Bay Area Census http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/.). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.
2 Applied Survey Research. (2015) School Readiness in San Leandro Unified School District: 2013 Assessment. Accessed at http://www.first5alameda.org/files/eval/School_Readiness_Report_2013_San_Leandro_4_23_14.pdf. 6 Department to expand services to Spanish-speaking families with young children through funding from First 5 Alameda County is an example of a successful effort to support student and family well-being and expand early identification and support for students with special needs. 3 ii. Transition-Age Youth
A host of factors is creating a new stage between adolescence and adulthood: well-paying jobs require increasing amounts of education, expanded opportunities for young women mean that early marriage and childbearing are less common, and high housing costs make it difficult for many young people to establish their own households.4 Transition-age youth – young people moving from adolescence into young adulthood – are approximately between the ages of 18 and 26. There is little social infrastructure to support the most vulnerable young people in this transition – particularly those young people who have been system-involved or have become disconnected from school.5 In San Leandro, the population of young people ages 20-24 increased by 11% from 2006-10 to 2010-14. Disconnection from school and work among transition-age youth, particularly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, was mentioned in more than one stakeholder interview.

While the graduation rate in San Leandro Unified School District has increased steadily in recent years, from 79.9% in 2010 to 87% in 2015, a total of 539 students who would have graduated during those years left school without graduating. These transition-age youth are likely to need specific services and interventions to support them to make a healthy transition to adulthood.6 iii. Vulnerable Seniors
Three groups of vulnerable seniors came to light in this analysis: seniors who speak Spanish or Asian languages at home, grandparents raising their grandchildren, and renters.

Access to services in Asian languages and in Spanish is very important for San Leandro’s seniors, as 79% of seniors who speak Asian and Pacific Islander languages, 59% of seniors who speak Spanish, and 46% of seniors who speak other languages speak English less than very well.

3 First 5 Alameda County. (2016) Neighborhood Partnership: San Leandro Library. On file with Urban Strategies Council. 4 Settersten, R., & Ray, B. (2010). What's Going on with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood. The Future of Children, 20(1), 19-41. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27795058 5 Osgood, D., Foster, E., & Courtney, M. (2010). Vulnerable Populations and the Transition to Adulthood. The Future of Children, 20(1), 209-229. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27795066 6 California Department of Education, DataQuest. Accessed at http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dataquest.asp 7 Population Reference Bureau. (No. 23: December 2011). “The Health and Well-Being of Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren.” Today’s Research on Aging. Accessed at http://www.prb.org/pdf11/TodaysResearchAging23.pdf. 7 their grandchildren are particularly vulnerable to economic insecurity and unmet physical and mental health needs, both for the children and the grandparents. 8 In San Leandro, an estimated

6.8% of households with children comprise grandparents raising their grandchildren, and nearly one in five households headed by a single woman (an estimated 18.5%) is a grandmother raising her grandchildren.
9 An estimated 57% of seniors who rent their housing were housing-cost burdened in San Leandro because their rent was more than 30% of their income.10 iv. People with Disabilities
San Leandrans with disabilities already are a population with substantial needs and are particularly vulnerable to the likely cuts and changes to Medicaid (e.g. block granting).

Medicaid plays a critical role in the wellbeing of people with disabilities by funding both acute health care and the kinds of long-term services and supports that enable people with disabilities to live in their homes and communities rather than in institutional care.11 According to Eden I&R, the agency that operates the resource and referral line called 2-1-1, of the 1,644 unduplicated clients from San Leandro served by 2-1-1 in 2015, 38% were people with disabilities. 12 v. Immigrants
In San Leandro, immigrants make up an estimated 35% of the population, 60% of whom are Asian and nearly 30% of whom are Latino. Foreign-born residents of San Leandro are far more likely to have less than a high school education (30% among immigrants versus 8% among those born in the U.S.). They are slightly more likely to be employed (69% versus 66%) and slightly more likely to be below poverty (12% compared to 10%).13
In two interviews, Arabic-speaking immigrant families from the Middle East were mentioned as a special population in need of services. Additionally, 1,292 unaccompanied minors who had been apprehended by immigration authorities were released to sponsors in Alameda County from October 2013 through October 2016.14

8 Padilla-Frausto DI and Wallace SP. The High Cost of Caring: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 2013.
9 US Census. (2015) American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-14. 10 American Community Survey, as cited in Alameda County. (2016) Alameda County Plan for Older Adults. Accessed at https://alamedasocialservices.org/public/services/elders_and_disabled_adults/docs/planning_committee/5.2016_Cou nty_Area_Plan.pdf.
11 Kaiser Family Foundation. (2017) Medicaid at 50. “People with Disabilities.” Accessed at http://kff.org/reportsection/medicaid-at-50-people-with-disabilities/ 12 Eden I&R, 2-1-1 Summary by City, 7/1/2014 Through 6/30/2015. Accessed at http://www.edenir.org/reports.html 13 US Census. (2015) American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-15. 14 Office of Refugee Resettlement. (2016) Unaccompanied Minors Released to Sponsors by County. Accessed at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/unaccompanied-children-released-to-sponsors-by-county 8 vi. Homeless Families with Children
The number of homeless students identified by San Leandro Unified School District has increased in recent years. The primary gaps in services for homeless families include housing, transportation, and substance abuse and mental health services for parents. The opening of the family resource center at the Barbara Lee Center for Health and Wellness has increased access to services, including health services and benefits enrollment, by many families including homeless families.
15 However, homeless families still face gaps in services including housing, mental health and substance abuse services, and transportation.

C. Service Gaps
i. High-Level Mental and Behavioral Health Needs
Mental illness and unmet mental health needs emerged as a theme in every stakeholder interview, particularly in relation to youth and to single homeless adults and homeless parents with children. San Leandro residents accounted for 12% of people with one or more psychiatric hospitalizations, and 8% of people with four or more psychiatric hospitalizations in the county in 2011-12.
16 Stakeholder interviews indicate service gaps for people who need more intensive assistance even to access services because they are unable to following up on referrals and appointments and need help with transportation. Untreated substance abuse was cited as a need, as well as a barrier to accessing housing and needed human services.

Additionally, only 61.3% of children ages 2-17 in San Leandro needing treatment or counseling received mental health services in 2011-12, indicating significant unmet mental health needs among children and adolescents as well.17
ii. Child and Family Enrollment in CalFresh
CalFresh, which is known nationally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provides eligible low-income households with funds to purchase healthful food. Compared with

15 Interview with Consuelo Zuluaga, San Leandro Unified School District, September 27, 2016. 16 Resource Development Associates. (2014) Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services Report on the AB1421 Planning Process. Accessed at http://www.acbhcs.org/docs/2014/BHCS_AB1421_Planning_Process.pdf 17 Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health, Advancing data-in-action partnerships for children and children with special health care needs in California counties and cities using synthetic estimation from the 2011/12 National Survey of Children’s Health and 2008-2012 American Community Survey (Nov. 2016). Accessed from http://www.kidsdata.org.
9 Alameda County, a lower percentage of CalFresh recipients in San Leandro are children, which might indicate that some eligible parents are not being reached through benefits enrollment efforts. We recommend that the Recreation and Human Services Department investigate potential gap in children enrolled in CalFresh, as a much lower percentage of CalFresh participants in San Leandro are children versus in Alameda County. Promoting the use of existing innovations such as the Food Stamps signup app https://getcalfresh.org might address this gap.18 iii. Anticipated Cuts to Safety Net
Many experts anticipate cuts to programs serving low-income people at the federal level.

Major cuts to safety net programs have been proposed or are underway, from repeal of the Affordable Care Act, to block-granting19 of Medicaid (Medi-Cal), and cuts to SNAP (CalFresh) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). San Leandro’s Recreation and Human Services Department can use its leverage as a funder, advocate, and convener to respond by strengthening the safety net to protect the most vulnerable residents.

Bolstering the local safety net already is a priority of ALL-IN Alameda County, which has identified hunger and the inadequacy of income assistance for people with disabilities through SSI as top priorities.
iv. Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence
Domestic and intimate partner violence is both an area of need and as an area in which successful collaboration is occurring, particularly through the San Leandro Domestic Violence Task Force. Domestic violence-related calls for assistance in San Leandro have fluctuated in recent years, from a high of 334 in 2011 to a low of 249 in 2006.

Approximately one in 20 high school students in San Leandro Unified School District reported that they had been hit, slapped, or intentionally physically hurt by a boyfriend/girlfriend in the past year.

18 The Prop 47 tool to help people clear old criminal convictions https://clearmyrecord.codeforamerica.org, improving their eligibility for jobs and public benefits, is another innovative tool worth promoting. 19 Block-granting means ending the federal government’s commitment to guarantee enrollment in a program to all who qualify and instead giving each state a lump-sum figure for that program. 10 D. Policy Recommendations

1. Articulate and communicate strategies and priorities for the various roles the Recreation and Human Services Department plays: funder, advocate, and convener.

2. Increase awareness of services outside of San Leandro.

3. Increase the quality of communication about human services available to San Leandro residents.

4. Convene cross-sector stakeholders to plan for the likely cuts to programs serving lowincome people at the federal level.

6. Create opportunities for other City of San Leandro departments to address human services needs, thereby bringing a human-needs perspective to other departments, building on successful cross-departmental efforts around homelessness with the San Leandro Police Department and around the needs of Spanish-speaking families with very youg children with the San Leandro Library.

7. Engage multi-sector partners to plan for meeting the needs of San Leandro’s diverse communities, including those most affected by poverty: Asians, Latinos, and African Americans.

8. Bring attention to San Leandro’s special populations and their needs, including grandparents raising grandchildren, young children, transition-age youth, seniors (particularly senior renters), homeless families, immigrants, and people with disabilities.

9. Develop a formal food security program, given the informal network of food pantries and providers giving food to those in need and the frequent concerns raised in focus groups and interviews.
11 “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain - until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” − Jane Addams
Introduction
The City of San Leandro engaged Urban Strategies Council to conduct an analysis of the human service needs of San Leandro residents, current human services assets within the city and region, and areas of unmet need. The purpose of the analysis and associated policy recommendations is to inform the development of priorities and criteria for the City’s human services policy and program decisions.

Urban Strategies Council’s scope of work included collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data from interviews with key stakeholders; demographic and economic data; data on the services available to San Leandro residents; and focus groups with community members to gather responses to our initial findings. Based on these analyses, we produced the following products: this report which includes findings from the data analysis and interviews, identification of key gaps and opportunities in human services, and policy recommendations; an accompanying slide deck with the major findings and recommendations; and an online map of human services in San Leandro and the surrounding area.

The questions and themes emerging from conversations with stakeholders identified by the Recreation and Human Services Department and from focus group participants shaped our data analysis and informed our policy recommendations. We conducted ten interviews with 14 key stakeholders and five focus groups. (See Appendix B.)
Deep concern for understanding and addressing the needs of vulnerable San Leandro residents ran throughout these conversations; that concern is a community asset. The stakeholders we interviewed are optimistic about the increased attention to human services within the Recreation and Human Services Department. Several spoke about the City’s recent efforts through the San Leandro Homeless Compact to mobilize the resources of the City of San Leandro, the Rental Housing Association of Southern Alameda County, and Building Futures with Women and Children to make available 25 units of permanent housing and an array of supportive services for people who have been chronically homeless. To date, 20 people have moved to permanent, secure housing through the Homeless Compact. The success of these efforts seems to have a created new sense of what is possible when a cross-sector group with strong leadership comes together to tackle a specific community problem.
12 Section I: San Leandro in Context
The Suburbanization of Poverty
Human services help vulnerable people, particularly people struggling with economic insecurity, to meet their basic needs. The context of human service needs in San Leandro is the suburbanization of poverty over recent decades, a nationwide trend. The suburbanization of poverty is due both to low-income people moving to suburban communities and to long-term suburban residents falling below the poverty level. The growth of jobs – including low-wage jobs – in suburbs, and rapid increases in the cost of housing in cities have been drawing low-income people to suburbs, and wage stagnation and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs have pushed some long-term suburban residents into poverty.20
People in poverty living in suburbs face particular challenges because the safety net is less well developed in suburban communities, public transit often is less dense, and stigma around seeking services can be higher than in cities. Because poverty in suburbs is less concentrated, the needs of people in poverty in communities like San Leandro can be hidden.

Additionally, suburban communities often have little history of political or community organizing among low-income residents, so these residents tend to have less political power.

In the Bay Area, well over half of people in poverty live in the suburbs. The percentage of those in poverty who lived in suburbs increased from 46.8% in 1970 to 57.2% in 2012. The number of people in poverty living in the Bay Area suburbs increased 51.4% between 2000 and 2012.21 In San Leandro, the percentage of residents in poverty decreased from 6% in 1970 to 4.6% in 1980, nearly doubled between 1980 and 2010, to 8.6%, and then increased to 10.6% in 2011-15. From 2000 to 2011-15, the number of people in poverty in San Leandro rose from 5,000 to approximately 9,300.
22 Our interviews with stakeholders23 revealed the consistent perception that the needs of San Leandro residents tend to be overlooked at the county level, and that within the community there is not yet a shared understanding of the needs of San Leandro residents, given the rapid demographic change the community has experienced in recent decades.

20 Metropolitan Poverty Program at Brookings, Confronting Suburban Poverty in America. (2014) http://confrontingsuburbanpoverty.org/
21 Metropolitan Poverty Program at Brookings, Confronting Suburban Poverty in America. (2014) Suburban Poverty Data Tables. Accessed at http://confrontingsuburbanpoverty.org/resources/top-100-us-metros/ 22 US Census 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 retrieved from Bay Area Census http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.
23 See
Appendix B for list of interviewees.
13 The Housing Crisis
The housing crisis in the broader Bay Area affects San Leandro residents, and was mentioned in every stakeholder interview. While housing per se is not in the purview of the Recreation and Human Services Department, housing insecurity exacerbates human service needs and can be a barrier to accessing services. Housing consistently has been the top need among callers to 2-1-1, the resource and referral line, in recent years.24 Housing insecurity exists along a spectrum, including being housing-cost burdened, doubled up, and unsheltered.

People who are homeless and without shelter are at the far end of the spectrum of housing insecurity. An estimated 150-200 homeless people live in San Leandro.25 The City of San Leandro has made strides in addressing homelessness through the San Leandro Homeless Compact. Through the Compact, the City of San Leandro, the Rental Housing Association of Southern Alameda County, and Building Futures with Women and Children have collaborated to make available 25 units of long-term, secure housing along with supportive services. To date, 20 formerly chronically homeless people, all of whom are seniors with disabilities, have been housed through the Compact.

Other efforts to address the needs of unsheltered residents of San Leandro that the Compact has coordinated have included expansion of the number of nights on which the Warming Shelter operates, and a street outreach team to people to the Warming Shelter, medical and mental health care, food, laundry, and processes for securing identification cards.

Housing insecurity that does not reach the level of living without shelter also is detrimental to many aspects of wellbeing. The Alameda County Public Health Department recently highlighted the impact of housing insecurity on health, finding that some residents must choose between unsafe housing and eviction, often living in conditions that exacerbate children’s asthma; that families sometimes cannot find housing that meets the needs of family members with disabilities; and that the stress of housing insecurity is leading to declining mental health among residents.26 A household is considered housing-cost burdened if housing costs account for 30% or more of household income, and severely housing-cost burdened if housing costs account for 50% or more of household income. Renters are group with the highest rates of housing-cost burden. Nearly half of San Leandro’s estimated 14,257 renter-occupied housing units are housing-cost burdened, and close to one in four is severely housing-cost burdened. Rates of housing-cost burden among the estimated 11,826 owner-occupied units with mortgages, however, are not far behind, with 43% housing-cost burdened and more than one in five severely housing-cost burdened.

Owner-occupied units without a mortgage are far less likely to be housing-cost burdened; nevertheless, nearly 300 such units are severely housing-cost burdened. An estimated total of 6,155 households in San Leandro spent half or more of their income on housing in the 2011-15

24 Eden I&R (2014). 2-1-1 Annual Report Fiscal Year 2014. Accessed at http://www.edenir.org/reports.html 25 Unpublished document describing the San Leandro Homeless Compact, City of San Leandro. 26 Alameda County Public Health Department and Behavioral Health Care Services (June 2016). Housing and Health for All in Alameda County.
14 period. The housing crisis affects the region, and these rates are almost identical to the county-wide rates. Nearly one in three San Leandro older adults is a renter (31% of seniors), and of those, 57% were housing-cost burdened in 2010-14, similar to the 62% of senior renters who are housing-cost burdened in Alameda County as a whole.
27 Table 1: Estimated Number and Percentage of Housing-Cost Burdened and Severely Housing-Cost Burdened Units in San Leandro (2011-15)
Housing Costs
as Percentage
of Household
Income
RenterOccupied
Housing Units
(14,257 total)
Owner-Occupied
Housing Units
with a mortgage
(11,826 total)
Owner-Occupied Housing
Units without a mortgage
(5,280 total)
≥30 percent 49% 6,965 43% 5,095 11% 592
≥50 percent 24% 3,419 21% 2,439 6% 297
Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

On the following page, the map shows the distribution of renter occupied households across the city. While the the city had a home ownership rate of 55% (similar to the Alameda County rate of 53%) in 2011-14, renters account for over two-thirds of households in many San Leandro neighborhoods. The majority of these neighborhoods or block groups are concentrated in Council District 1. There are also several neighborhoods with virtually no renters, and many of these are also located in District 1.

27 American Community Survey, as cited in Alameda County. (2016) Alameda County Plan for Older Adults. Accessed at https://alamedasocialservices.org/public/services/elders_and_disabled_adults/docs/planning_committee/5.2016_Cou nty_Area_Plan.pdf.
15 Map 1: Percentage of Renter Occupied Households, by block group, (2010 – 2014) 16 A Small Community with Substantial Need
San Leandro residents make up approximately 6% of the population of Alameda County. An estimated 5% of Alameda County residents below the poverty level live in San Leandro, and 5% of the socioeconomically disadvantaged students in Alameda County are enrolled in San Leandro Unified School District.

San Leandro’s population increased from just under 80,000 in 2000 to an estimated 90,000 in 2015, an increase of approximately 13%.28 The following map shows the total population of San Leandro using census tracts; while some areas of the city have fairly small populations (around 2,000 people), many parts of the city are fairly dense with over 8,000 people per tract yielding a density of approximately 20,000 people per square mile. The city average is 6,366 people per square mile.

28 US Census Bureau: Census 2000 and 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. 17 Map 2: Total Population by Census Tract (2011 to 2015) 18 Poverty is a useful, though limited, proxy for human services needs because people with income below the federal poverty level are likely to have difficulty meeting basic needs. However, the federal poverty guidelines do not take into account regional variations in the cost of living, so the poverty rate understates the extent to which people in high-cost regions like the Bay Area are struggling to make ends meet. Many people in San Leandro are struggling financially but are not under the federal poverty level. The poverty rate in San Leandro (10.6%) is slightly lower the County rate (12.5%), though it is higher than the median poverty rate among cities in Alameda County.29 According to the Self-Sufficiency Standard for Alameda County, in 2014 a family with two parents working full time with one preschooler and one school-aged child would need an income of $63,979 to adequately meet its basic needs, 268% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines ($23,850 for a family of four).30 An estimated 30% of San Leandro residents had income below 200% of the poverty level 2011-2015.

Figure 1: Percentage of Population Below Poverty Level, Alameda County and Cities, 2011-15 Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

29 US Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2011-2015. 30 Insight Center for Community Economic Development, Self-Sufficiency Tool for California. (2015). Accessed at http://www.insightcced.org/tools-metrics/self-sufficiency-standard-tool-for-california/.

4.0%

4.4%

5.2%

5.7%

6.1%

7.9%

8.1%

9.8%

10.6%

11.4%

11.9%

13.4%

20.4%

12.5%

0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0%
Dublin
Pleasanton
Piedmont
Livermore
Fremont
Newark
Union City
Alameda
San Leandro
Albany
Emeryville
Hayward
Berkeley
Oakland
Alameda County
19 Moreover, San Leandro’s median household income is the second-lowest in the county, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau. In the 2014-15 school year, 57.9% of students San Leandro Unified School District were eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, well above the Alameda County average of 43.7%.31 These data indicate that although San Leandro is a small community, substantial financial need – and therefore need for human services – exists within the city.

Figure 2: Median Household Income, Alameda County and Cities, 2011-15 Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

The following map shows the median income for households across Alameda County. Most San Leandro block groups have median incomes between $45,000 and $90,000, with several having median income levels below $45,000 and just a few small areas with much higher median incomes.

Compared with many other cities in the county, San Leandro has lower levels of income inequality.

31 As cited on kidsdata.org, California Dept. of Education, Student Poverty FRPM Data (Mar. 2016). $54,618
$62,761
$65,096
$66,237
$77,806
$79,312
$79,596
$85,521
$86,757
$100,992
$105,355
$118,773
$124,759
$208,772
$75,619
$- $50,000 $100,000 $150,000 $200,000 $250,000
Oakland
San Leandro
Hayward
Berkeley
Emeryville
Alameda
Albany
Union City
Newark
Livermore
Fremont
Dublin
Pleasanton
Piedmont
Alameda County
20 Map 3: Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months, in 2014 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars (2010 to 2014) Source: US Census Bureau. (2015). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014 21 Section II: Demographics
Race/Ethnicity
San Leandro is increasingly racially diverse, with no single group in the majority. Asians were the largest group (32%), followed by Latinos (27%) and Whites (24%), and African Americans (12%) during the period from 2011-2015.

Figure 3: Racial Composition of San Leandro Residents (2011-2015) Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

In recent years, the number of Asian and Latino residents has increased while the number of African American and White residents has fallen slightly.
32%
12%
27% 0%
1%
24%
4%
Asian
Black or African
American
Native American
Hispanic or Latino
Pacific Islander
White
Two or More Races
22 Figure 4: San Leandro Population by Race/Ethnicity (2006-2010 through 2010-2014) Source: US Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2006-2010 through 2010-2014.

The maps on the following pages illustrate the distribution of Asian, Latino, and African American residents across the city. We see that the northern part of the city houses very few Asian people while the rest of the city has between 2,000 to 3,500 Asian people per census tract. The higher density of Asian people also matches the areas of high overall population density. The Latino population however is much more dispersed, with pockets of larger populations across the city. The African American population is concentrated, with just two census tracts over 1,000 residents. -
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
2006-2010 2007-2011 2008-2012 2009-2013 2010-2014
Asian
Black or African American
Hispanic or Latino
Native /American
Pacific Islander
White
23 Map 4: Asian Population by Census Tract, from 2011 to 2015

24 Map 5: Latino Population by Census Tract, from 2011 to 2015 25 Map 6: African American Population by Census Tract, from 2011 to 2015 San Leandro’s Asian communities comprise a diversity of ethnicities. The two largest Asian groups are Chinese and Filipino, followed by Vietnamese, Asian Indian, Japanese, and Korean residents, with more than 1,000 residents of other Asian ethnicities. 26 Figure 5: San Leandro Asian Residents, by Ethnicity (2010-14) Source: US Census Bureau. (2015). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014.

Poverty rates vary by race/ethnicity, with the highest rates among Latino, African American, and Asian residents of San Leandro, among whom roughly one in eight are below the poverty level.

Asians comprise the largest number of people in poverty (an estimated 3,335), followed by Latinos (estimated at just under 3,000). While the poverty rate of white residents is just over half the rate for Latino and African American residents, whites are the third-largest group of San Leandro residents in poverty (estimated just over 1,400). Approximately 9,300 people in San Leandro are below the federal poverty level.

Figure 6: Percentage of San Leandro Residents below Poverty, by Race/Ethnicity (2011-15) Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015. 1,060
13,391
8,123
831 536
2,976
1,131

6.8%

7.9%

3.4%

5.4%

12.5%

11.8%

12.2%
White
Two or more races
Pacific Islander
Native American
Latino
Asian
African American
27 Table 2: Number of San Leandro Residents below Poverty, by Race/Ethnicity (2011-15) Race/Ethnicity Number below Poverty
African American 1,283
Asian 3,335
Latino origin (of any race) 2,997
Native American 53
Pacific Islander 36
Some other race 515
Two or more races 400
White alone, not Hispanic or
Latino 1,430
Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

Income Levels
One way to understand the economic composition of the community is to examine data on personal income tax returns from the IRS. The income reported on personal income tax returns can be a reasonable proxy for household income. The graph below shows that while the number of tax returns in the highest income brackets ($100,000-$200,000 and $200,000 and above) is rising, the lowest earners (those with under $25,000 and $25,000-$50,000 in income) make up the largest proportion of San Leandro residents.
28 Figure 7: Percentage of San Leandro Personal Income Tax Returns, by Income Level: 2014 Source: Internal Revenue Service (2016). SOI Tax Stats - Individual Income Tax Return (Form 1040) Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.irs.gov/uac/tax-stats.

Another area of divergent perceptions among the stakeholders we interviewed was the changing economic composition of the San Leandro community, with some perceiving increasing economic insecurity and others talking about increasing numbers of high earners. In the following graph, we can see that the number of tax returns with income in the highest income categories did increase from 2010 to 2014, as did the number of tax returns in every category but the lowest (under $25,000). However, the number of high earners is far smaller than the number of residents with incomes in the lowest categories.
34%
27%
16%
9%
12%
2%
Under $25,000 $25,000 to under $50,000
$50,000 to under $75,000 $75,000 to under $100,000
$100,000 to under $200,000 $200,000 or more
29 Figure 8: Number of San Leandro Personal Income Tax Returns, by Income Level (2010-2014) Source: Internal Revenue Service (2016). SOI Tax Stats - Individual Income Tax Return (Form 1040) Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.irs.gov/uac/tax-stats.

Not surprisingly, poverty is much higher among unemployed residents (27.5% in poverty), but nearly one in 20 employed residents (4.5%) was below the poverty level in 2011-15.32 Language
Language access is a key consideration in planning for and delivering human services.

Approximately 42,000 San Leandro residents speak a language other than English at home. Merely speaking a language other than English at home, however, does not mean that someone needs services in that language. Distinguishing residents who speak English “less than very well,” and

32 US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015. 0 2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
18,000
20,000
Under
$25,000
$25,000 to
under
$50,000
$50,000 to
under
$75,000
$75,000 to
under
$100,000
$100,000 to
under
$200,000
$200,000 or
more
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
30 therefore will not be able to access services provided in English only is critical. In San Leandro, more than half of the roughly 21,500 people who speak Asian or Pacific Island languages, and half of the estimated 16,800 who speak Spanish at home, speak English less than very well.

Table 3: Non-English Languages Spoken at Home among San Leandro Residents, 2010-14 Language Spoken at Home
Estimated
Number of
Language
Speakers
Speak
English Very
Well
Speak English
Less than Very
Well
Spanish 16,780 50% 50%
Other Indo-European languages 3,123 62% 38%
Asian and Pacific Island languages 21,478 43% 57%
Other languages 607 79% 21%
Source: US Census Bureau. (2015). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014.

Data about the languages spoken at home by San Leandro Unified School District students who speak a language other than English at home gives an idea of the specific languages encompassed in the broad language categories in the table above. More than half of the District’s students (53%) spoke a language other than English at home. The table below lists the home languages spoken by at least 10 students. (Smaller numbers of students spoke at least 23 additional languages in 2014-

15.)
Table 4: Most Common Home Languages of English Learner and Fluent English Proficient Students in San Leandro Unified School District (2014-15)
Language Number of Students
Spanish 2,914
Cantonese 564
Filipino (Pilipino or Tagalog) 348
Vietnamese 307
Other non-English languages 105
Arabic 84
Mandarin (Putonghua) 50
Punjabi 30
Khmer (Cambodian) 25
Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian) 15
Hindi 13
Portuguese 12
Samoan 10
Source: California Department of Education, DataQuest.
31 While the list of languages spoken by students is useful as an indication of the extensive language diversity within San Leandro, school-aged children are the age group least likely to speak English less than very well. Older adults, particularly those age 65 or over, are the most likely to need services in languages other than English. Elders (age 65 or over) who speak Asian and Pacific Islander languages are the group most likely to speak English less than very well (79%), followed by adults ages 18-64 who speak Asian and Pacific Islander Languages and Spanish-speaking elders (both at 59% speaking English less than very well), and Spanish-speaking adults age 18-64 (56%).

More than 40% of adults 18-64 who speak Indo-European languages other than Spanish and elders who speak other languages also speak English less than very well; Table 4 gives a glimpse of the many languages those categories encompass.

Figure 9: Percentage of San Leandro Residents Who Speak English Less than ‘Very Well,’ by Language Spoken at Home and Age Group (2010-2014)
Source: Census Bureau. (2015). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014.

The racial, ethnic, and language diversity of San Leandro means that a wide range of services will be needed to meet residents’ human services needs – especially the needs of elders who do not speak English well – which will require planning for a continuum of services both within and outside San Leandro, because services located within San Leandro are unlikely to be able to meet the linguistic and cultural needs of such a diverse population.

Age
Our interviews with stakeholders revealed divergent perceptions about how the age composition of the San Leandro community has changed over time, with some perceiving that the population of children is increasing and others that the elder population is increasing. These different perceptions make sense when we separate long-term trends from changes in recent years. 22%
32%
9%
29%
59%
43%
18%
56%
79%
29%
46%
59%
Asian and Pacific
Island Languages
Other Indo-European Other Languages Spanish
5 to 17
18 to 64
65+
32 The population of seniors rose steadily from 1970 to 1990, and declined somewhat from 1990 to 2010. The population of young children declined from 1970 to 1980, climbed steadily from 1980 to 2000, and increased modestly from 2000 to 2010.

Figure 10: Population Age 65 and Over San Leandro (1970-2010) Source: US Census 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010. Retrieved from Bay Area Census http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/.

Figure 11: Population Under Age 5 San Leandro (1970-2010) Source: US Census 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010. Retrieved from Bay Area Census http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/. 0 2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
0 1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
33 In recent years, the biggest changes have been a decline by 11% in the number of children under age 10, a 20% increase in transition-age youth (ages 20-24), a 10% increase in seniors ages 65 to 84, and an increase of people over age 85 of 17%.

Table 5: San Leandro Population, by Age Group: Change from 2006-10 to 2010-14 Age Group 2006-2010 2007-2011 2008-2012 2009-2013 2010-2014 Percent
change 2006-
10 to 2010-14
Under 10 10,868 10,690 10,573 9,850 9,630 -11%
10 to 19 9,843 10,718 9,994 9,685 10,077 2%
20 to 24 4,855 4,912 5,140 5,678 5,829 20%
25 to 64 46,493 46,509 48,109 49,194 49,674 7%
65 to 84 8,782 8,868 9,011 9,378 9,627 10%
85 and over 1,989 2,180 2,139 2,253 2,322 17%
All ages 82,830 83,877 84,966 86,038 87,159 5%
Source: US Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2006-2010 through 2010-2014.

Economic vulnerability varies by age group. Here, too, we use the federal poverty guidelines as a proxy for need, while recognizing that the cost of living in the Bay Area – and in San Leandro – means that poverty figures understate the extent of local economic vulnerability. As is true statewide, San Leandro children under 18 have the highest poverty rate among age groups (13.8%) and elders age 65 and over have the lowest poverty rate (8.2%). Children under 18 are the secondlargest age group among people below the poverty level at just over 2,500, while the largest group of people in poverty are neither children nor elders, but adults ages 35-64 (nearly 3,700 people).
34 Figure 12: Percentage of San Leandro Residents below Poverty Level, by Age Group (2011-15) Source: US Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

Table 6: Number of San Leandro Residents below Poverty, by Age Group (2011-15) Age Group Number below Poverty
Under 18 years 2,522
18 to 34 years 2,173
35 to 64 years 3,681
65 years and over 963
Source: Census Bureau. (2016). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-2015.

Young Children
In 2013, San Leandro Unified School District (SLUSD) participated in a survey of school readiness sponsored by First 5 Alameda County and conducted by Applied Survey Research. San Leandro’s kindergarteners were less likely than their peers in Alameda County to be ready for kindergarten. While 45% of Alameda County kindergarteners were strong in all readiness domains (self-care and motor skills, self-regulation, social expression, and kindergarten academics), just 35% of San Leandro kindergarteners were strong in all domains in 2013. In San Leandro, and in the county as a whole, attending a licensed center-based preschool was associated with higher levels of school readiness – both for children in low-income families and in higher-income families. However, only 50% of kindergarteners surveyed in SLUSD had attended preschool. The report recommends

8.2%

9.5%

11.3%

13.8%
65 years and over
35 to 64 years
18 to 34 years
Under 18 years
35 that the San Leandro community support student and family well-being and expand early identification and support for students with special needs. 33 The partnership between the Library and the Recreation and Human Services Department to expand services to Spanish-speaking families with young children through funding from First 5 Alameda County is an example of a successful effort on these issues. The program aims to increase school readiness through bilingual (Spanish/English) developmentally-specific and family-centered story times, parent-child playgroups, and parent education workshops. The program supports the early identification of young children with special needs, as recommended above.

Children not enrolled in licensed child care account for 86% of the children served.34 The disparities by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity in English Language Arts among third graders in SLUSD highlight the importance of increasing opportunities for low-income, Latino, and African American families with young children. Third-grade reading levels are both an indication of the extent to which children are surrounded by opportunities that support their development in early childhood and a bellwether of later academic achievement and attainment.35 Figure 13: Percentage of SLUSD Third Graders Who Met or Exceeded English Language Arts Standards, by Socioeconomic Status (2015-16)
Source: California Department of Education, DataQuest.

33 Applied Survey Research. (2015) School Readiness in San Leandro Unified School District: 2013 Assessment. Accessed at http://www.first5alameda.org/files/eval/School_Readiness_Report_2013_San_Leandro_4_23_14.pdf. 34 First 5 Alameda County. (2016) Neighborhood Partnership: San Leandro Library. On file with Urban Strategies Council. 35 The Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2013) Early Warning Confirmed: A Research Update on Third-Grade Reading. Available at http://www.aecf.org/resources/early-warning-confirmed/. 29%
59%
Economically Disadvantaged Not Economically
Disadvantaged
36 Figure 14: Percentage of SLUSD Third Graders Who Met or Exceeded English Language Arts Standards, by Race/Ethnicity (2015-16)
Source: California Department of Education, DataQuest.

School-Age Children and Youth
The racial/ethnic composition of the overall population differs from that of students in San Leandro Unified School District (SLUSD), not only because the racial/ethnic categories in data from the Census Bureau and the California Department of Education do not align neatly. Latino students are the largest group of SLUSD students (48%), while Latinos are 29% of the overall population of the city. African American students are 16% of SLUSD students, compared to 11% of the overall population in San Leandro, while white students are 9% of SLUSD enrollment and 25% of the city’s overall population. Sixteen percent of SLUSD students are Asian and 8% are Filipino (a combined value of 24% for all Asian groups), compared with the 33% of San Leandro’s overall population is Asian (Filipinos are included in that figure). 36%
55% 50%
29%
58% 62%
African
American
Asian Filipino Latino White Two or
More
Races
37 Figure 15: San Leandro Unified School District Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity (2015-16) Source: California Department of Education, DataQuest.

A useful measure of economic insecurity among children and youth is students’ eligibility for free or reduced-price school meals. The income of a student’s family must fall below 130% of the federal poverty guidelines ($31,005 for a family of four in 2014-2015) for the student to qualify for free meals, or below 185% of the federal poverty guidelines ($44,123 for a family of four in 2014-2015) for the student to qualify for reduced-price meals. In 2014-15, 47.4% of students in San Leandro Unified School District qualified for free school meals, and an additional 10.4% qualified for reduced-price meals.
36 The following table shows that the percentage of SLUSD students eligible for free or reduced-price meals (combined) rose steeply between 2007 and 2013, and declined since then but has not fallen to the 2007 level. In 2015, 4,867 SLUSD students were eligible.

Table 7: San Leandro Unified School District Students Eligible for Free or Reduced-Price School Meals 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

51.1% 51.5% 53.8% 55.1% 56.7% 65.7% 65.5% 65.0% 57.9%
Source: California Dept. of Education, Student Poverty FRPM Data (Mar. 2016). Accessed at kidsdata.org The majority of San Leandro children (an estimated 70%) live in households headed by a married couple, while an estimated 22% live in households headed by a single woman and 8% by a single

36 As cited on kidsdata.org, California Dept. of Education, Student Poverty FRPM Data (Mar. 2016). 14%
16%
8%
48%
0%
1%
4%
9%
African American
Asian
Filipino
Latino
Native American
Pacific Islander
Two or More Races
White
38 man. Children in households headed by a single woman are the most likely to be in poverty (29%), followed by children in households headed by a single man (23%), while 10% of children in marriedcouple households are in poverty.37 Additionally, 29% of calls from San Leandro clients to 2-1-1, the three-digit telephone number that provides Alameda County residents with access to health, housing and human services referrals, were single mothers with children in 2015. 38 As can be seen in the following map, families with children under 18 are found throughout San Leandro, with the largest numbers living in block groups in City Council districts 1, 2, 5, and 6. Most block groups in San Leandro have at least 250 families, suggesting that services for children, youth, and families must be accessible to people living all across San Leandro.

37 US Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014. 38 Eden I&R, 2-1-1 Summary by City, 7/1/2014 Through 6/30/2015. Accessed at http://www.edenir.org/reports.html 39 Map 7: Number of families with children under 18 years old, by block group, from 2010-2014 Source: US Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates 2010-2014 40 Transition-Age Youth
A host of factors is creating a new stage between adolescence and adulthood: well-paying jobs require increasing amounts of education, expanded opportunities for young women mean that early marriage and childbearing are less common, and high housing costs make it difficult for many young people to establish their own households.39 Transition-age youth – young people moving from adolescence into young adulthood – are approximately between the ages of 18 and 26. There is little social infrastructure to support the most vulnerable young people in this transition – particularly those young people who have been system-involved or have become disconnected from school.40 Parents of all income levels spend the same proportion of their income (and the same amount of time) supporting their transition-age children, but low-income parents often cannot provide enough to meet their children’s needs.41 In San Leandro, the population of young people ages 20-24 increased by 11% from 2006-10 to 2010-14. Disconnection from school and work among transitionage youth, particularly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, was mentioned in more than one stakeholder interview.

No city-level data about disconnected transition-age youth are available. However, the number of young people who left high school without graduating is a useful approximation. While the graduation rate in San Leandro Unified School District has increased steadily in recent years, from

79.9% in 2010 to 87% in 2015, a total of 539 students who would have graduated during those years left school without graduating. These transition-age youth are likely to need specific services and interventions to support them to make a healthy transition to adulthood. 42 ALL
IN – Alameda County, a county-wide antipoverty initiative, conducted listening sessions across the county and one theme that came to the surface from those sessions was the need for transition-age youth to have access to career pathways.
43 Working-Age Adults
Working-age adults, ages 35-64, comprise the largest number of people in poverty among age groups in San Leandro, approximately 3,700 people, although this age group has the lowest poverty rate. This means that efforts targeting only the most vulnerable age groups must be coupled with strategies that aim to reach this age group as well.

Language needs are an important consideration for this age group, particularly for the 35% of residents born in a country other than the U.S. As can be seen below, 59% of adult residents (ages

39 Settersten, R., & Ray, B. (2010). What's Going on with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood. The Future of Children, 20(1), 19-41. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27795058 40 Osgood, D., Foster, E., & Courtney, M. (2010). Vulnerable Populations and the Transition to Adulthood. The Future of Children, 20(1), 209-229. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27795066 41 Furstenberg, F. (2010). On a New Schedule: Transitions to Adulthood and Family Change. The Future of Children, 20(1), 67-87. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27795060 42 California Department of Education, DataQuest. Accessed at http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dataquest.asp 43 ALL IN – Alameda County, Quarterly Report (March 2016). 41 18-64) who speak Asian and Pacific Islander languages, 56% of those who speak Spanish, and 43% who speak other Indo-European languages, speak English less than very well.

Seniors
The relatively small number of elders under the poverty line (approximately 960), and the lower rate of poverty (8.2%) do not mean that economic insecurity – and need for human services – is not an issue for San Leandro’s elders. The only measure of economic security that takes into account the actual cost of living for seniors in Alameda County is the Elder Economic Security Index, which is calculated based on local older adult’s basic expenses—housing, food, health care and transportation. According to the Elder Index, many elders in Alameda County have incomes too low to meet their needs, but too high to qualify for public benefits. The Elder Index estimates that a single elder renter living alone needs an income more than twice as high as the federal poverty guidelines ($26,043 versus $10,890 in 2011). In San Leandro, nearly 17% of elders have incomes below 150% of the poverty level.
44 The Alameda County Consumer Survey of older adults captured data from 227 elders in San Leandro. The top ten concerns among San Leandro seniors, in order of rating were:

1. Income for basic needs

2. Income for future

3. Maintain home

4. Stay in home

5. Falling

6. Housing affordable

7. Inclusion in decisions

8. Prepare healthy food

9. Anxiety or stress

10. Personal safety45
San Leandro seniors rated the items above as greater concerns than did seniors countywide.

Of particular relevance to the question of economic vulnerability among elders in San Leandro, Human Services staff report that the majority of unsheltered homeless people in San Leandro are elders, and all of those housed through the City’s recent efforts through the San Leandro Homeless Compact to mobilize resources (local and regional, public and private) to address the

44 Insight Center for Community and Economic Development, Elder Economic Security Index (2012). Accessed at http://www.insightcced.org/past-archives/insight-networks/building-economic-security-for-all-besa/measuring-andaddressing-older-californians-needs/what-seniors-need-to-make-ends-meet-elder-index-in-alameda-county/. 45 Alameda County. (2016) Alameda County Plan for Older Adults. Accessed at https://alamedasocialservices.org/public/services/elders_and_disabled_adults/docs/planning_committee/5.2016_Cou nty_Area_Plan.pdf.
42 needs of unsheltered homeless people living along the creek and at the Marina have been elders.46 Moreover, the San Leandro profile included in the Alameda County Plan for Older Adults reports that 57% of seniors who rent their housing were housing-cost burdened because their rent was more than 30% of their income.47
Access to services in Asian languages and in Spanish is very important for San Leandro’s seniors, as 79% of seniors who speak Asian and Pacific Islander languages, 59% of seniors who speak Spanish, and 46% of seniors who speak other languages speak English less than very well.

Note, as well, that two people with disabilities also are disproportionately seniors.

Seniors aged 65 and over are to be found in most neighborhoods in San Leandro, however there are concentrated populations in many City Council Districts. Seniors are less present in the southern half of the city but it is fair to say that senior services need to be equitably located to accommodate people living all across the city.

46 Information from Jeanette Dong, Recreation and Human Services Director, July 15, 2016. 47 American Community Survey, as cited in Alameda County. (2016) Alameda County Plan for Older Adults. Accessed at https://alamedasocialservices.org/public/services/elders_and_disabled_adults/docs/planning_committee/5.2016_Cou nty_Area_Plan.pdf.
43 Map 8: Number of people aged 65 and above, by block group, (2010 – 2014) Source: US Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates 2010-2014 44 Special Populations
Interviews with stakeholders, data analysis, and focus groups surfaced the needs of particularly vulnerable groups of residents who often are not visible in the community. The human services needs of these special populations must be part of planning for and evaluating human services, both within the city and at the county level. The following special populations emerged as populations facing gaps in services: people with disabilities, vulnerable seniors, immigrants, and homeless families with children. The other populations facing gaps, young children and transition-age youth, are discussed in the Age section of the report.

People with Disabilities
Though definitions vary for different purposes, the American with Disabilities Act defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. San Leandrans with disabilities already are a population with substantial needs and are particularly vulnerable to the likely cuts and changes to Medicaid (e.g. block granting). Medicaid plays a critical role in the wellbeing of people with disabilities by funding both acute health care and the kinds of long-term services and supports that enable people with disabilities to live in their homes and communities rather than in institutional care.48 According to Eden I&R, the agency that operates the 2-1-1 resource and referral line, of the 1,644 unduplicated clients from San Leandro served by 2-1-1 in 2015, 38% were people with disabilities.
49 Special education data indicate that 14% of SLUSD students have a disability that requires specialized instruction, a higher percentage of students than in the county or the state.50 Learning disabilities are the most common type of disability by far, followed by speech or language impairment and autism.

48 Kaiser Family Foundation. (2017) Medicaid at 50. “People with Disabilities.” Accessed at http://kff.org/reportsection/medicaid-at-50-people-with-disabilities/ 49 Eden I&R, 2-1-1 Summary by City, 7/1/2014 Through 6/30/2015. Accessed at http://www.edenir.org/reports.html 50 California Department of Education, DataQuest.
45 Table 8: San Leandro Unified School District Students Enrolled in Special Education (District of Residence):

December 2015
Disability Number
of
Students
Percentage of Special
Educations Students
by Disability
Autism 169 14%
Emotional Disturbance 44 4%
Intellectual Disability 37 3%
Orthopedic Impairment 12 1%
Other Health Impairment 100 8%
Other low-incidence disabilities 119 10%
Specific Learning Disability 502 42%
Speech or Language
Impairment
214 18%
Source: California Department of Education, DataQuest.

The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, using a more restrictive definition of disability, estimates that just 3.7% of San Leandro children ages 5-17 have a disability, compared to 6.8% of adults ages 18-64, and 34.7% of elders age 65 and older. These data reveal that cognitive disabilities account for a greater share of disabilities among children, while among elders, ambulatory disabilities account for the greatest share of disabilities. 51 The next map indicates that the largest number of residents with disabilities live in City Council District 1 and District 3, and District 6. Disability data were only available at the Census Tract level, less precise than block groups, however these data do show concentrations of people with disabilities through the central part of the city. There is much less dispersion in this population, as a result of many factors.

51 US Census. (2015) American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-14. 46 Map 9: People with Disabilities (2010-14)
47 Vulnerable Seniors
Three groups of vulnerable seniors came to light in this analysis: grandparents raising their grandchildren, seniors who speak Spanish or Asian languages at home, and renters.

Households in which grandparents are caring for their grandchildren have become more common in recent decades. The most vulnerable of these households are those that do not include the middle generation (the children’s parents); in these families, grandparents are most often stepping in to raise the grandchildren because the parents are unable to do so because of incarceration, addiction, or mental illness, abuse or neglect of the children, or death. 52 Families in which grandparents are
raising their grandchildren are particularly vulnerable to economic insecurity and unmet physical and mental health needs, both for the children and the grandparents. 53 In San Leandro,
an estimated 6.8% of households with children comprise grandparents raising their grandchildren, and nearly one in five households headed by a single woman (an estimated 18.5%) is a grandmother raising her grandchildren.
54 The financial and housing difficulties facing
grandparents raising grandchildren was brought up as an issue in the focus group at the San Leandro Senior Center. The most effective services and supports to these families include financial assistance, housing assistance, support groups, respite care, and increasing the capacity of health and social service providers to understand and effectively work with them.55 Access to services in Asian languages and in Spanish is very important for San Leandro’s seniors, as 79% of seniors who speak Asian and Pacific Islander languages, 59% of seniors who speak Spanish, and 46% of seniors who speak other languages speak English less than very well.

As mentioned earlier, the San Leandro profile included in the Alameda County Plan for Older Adults reports that 57% of seniors who rent their housing were housing-cost burdened because their rent was more than 30% of their income.56
Immigrants
In San Leandro, immigrants make up an estimated 35% of the population, 60% of whom are Asian and nearly 30% of whom are Latino. Foreign-born residents of San Leandro are far more likely to have less than a high school education (30% among immigrants versus 8% among those

52 Population Reference Bureau. (No. 23: December 2011). “The Health and Well-Being of Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren.” Today’s Research on Aging. Accessed at http://www.prb.org/pdf11/TodaysResearchAging23.pdf. 53 Padilla-Frausto DI and Wallace SP. The High Cost of Caring: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. Los Angeles, CA:

UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 2013.
54 US Census. (2015) American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-14. 55 Population Reference Bureau. (No. 23: December 2011). “The Health and Well-Being of Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren.” Today’s Research on Aging. Accessed at http://www.prb.org/pdf11/TodaysResearchAging23.pdf. 56 American Community Survey, as cited in Alameda County. (2016) Alameda County Plan for Older Adults. Accessed at https://alamedasocialservices.org/public/services/elders_and_disabled_adults/docs/planning_committee/5.2016_Cou nty_Area_Plan.pdf.
48 born in the U.S.). They are slightly more likely to be employed (69% versus 66%) and slightly more likely to be below poverty (12% compared to 10%).57
In two interviews, Arabic-speaking immigrant families from the Middle East were mentioned as a special population in need of services. Additionally, 1,292 unaccompanied minors who had been apprehended by immigration authorities were released to sponsors in Alameda County from October 2013 through October 2016; one interviewee mentioned these young people as a group with unmet human services needs in San Leandro.
58 Homeless Families with Children
The San Leandro Unified School District identified and served 228 homeless students in the 2015- 16 school year, including 10 unaccompanied youth.59 Homeless students are defined by the McKinney-Vento Act as those who lack “a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” The following table shows that the majority of those students (80%) were in doubled-up housing, followed by shelters and hotels.

Table 9: San Leandro Unified School District Homeless Students, by Type of Residence (2015-16) Type of Residence Students
Doubled Up 158
Shelters 29
Transitional 7
Unsheltered 4
Hotels 22
Other 8
Total 228
Source: San Leandro Unified School District, McKinney Vento Analysis, 2015-16.

The number of homeless students identified by SLUSD has increased in recent years. The primary gaps in services for homeless families include housing, transportation, and substance abuse and mental health services for parents. The opening of the family resource center at the Barbara Lee Center for Health and Wellness has increased access to services, including health services and benefits enrollment.
60 However, homeless families still face gaps in
services including housing, mental health and substance abuse services, and transportation.

Moreover, federal funding for homeless services typically is restricted to people meeting a narrower definition of homelessness which excludes the majority of homeless families (those who are doubled up in housing). Research demonstrates that living without secure, long-term housing harms

57 US Census. (2015) American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2011-15. 58 Office of Refugee Resettlement. (2016) Unaccompanied Minors Released to Sponsors by County. Accessed at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/unaccompanied-children-released-to-sponsors-by-county 59 Note that these unaccompanied youth are not the unaccompanied minors who have been detained by immigration authorities and released to sponsors; these unaccompanied youth are homeless and not in the care of their families. 60 Interview with Consuelo Zuluaga, San Leandro Unified School District, September 27, 2016. 49 children’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development and increases the likelihood that they will drop out of school and face chronic disease in adulthood.61 Figure 16: Number of Homeless Students in San Leandro Unified School District (2012-13 to 2015-16) Source: San Leandro Unified School District, McKinney Vento Analysis, 2015-16.

Section III: Services and Gaps in Services
Location of Services
Far more services are located in San Leandro than is commonly perceived. Interviewees often mentioned three or four organizations, while data show that more than 65 service providers are located in the city. (Many organizations provide multiple services.) 32% of those are health care services, followed by individual and family life services (17%), and basic needs services (15%). Note also that the 2-1-1 database from which these data are drawn does not include many of the collaboration-based services operating in San Leandro, such as those provided through the Interfaith Homeless Network of San Leandro or the several food pantries at local churches.

The distribution of types of services is described in the table on the following page. 62 61 ChildTrends. (2012) When the Bough Breaks: The Effects of Homelessness on Young Children. Accessed at http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-08EffectHomelessnessChildren.pdf 62 For a list of organizations by service type, see
Table 16 in Appendix A, p. 55.
194 192
206
228
0 50
100
150
200
250
2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016
50 Table 10: Services Located in San Leandro City Limits, by Type (2015) Service Type Number of Providers/Programs
Basic Needs 10
Consumer Services 1
Legal Services 5
Education 1
Environment and Public Health/Safety 2
Health Care 21
Income Support and Employment 1
Individual and Family Life 11
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services 3
Organizational/Community/International Services 8
Source: Data provided to Urban Strategies Council by Eden I & R, Inc. 2-1-1 Alameda County. 51 Map 10: Locations of Services in San Leandro and Surrounding Area (2015-17) Source: Data provided to Urban Strategies Council by Eden I & R, Inc. 2-1-1 Alameda County 52 Site Number Organization
A Alameda County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) B
C
Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD)
Asian Health Services/Asian Community Mental Health Services D
E
F
Barbara Lee Center for Health and Wellness, Native American Health Center & East Bay Agency for Children Family Resource Center
Black Adoption Placement and Research Center
G Boys and Girls Club of San Leandro
H Building Futures with Women and Children
I CALICO Center
J
K
L
City of San Leandro
Davis Street Family Resource Center – (DSFRC)
Deaf Counseling Advocacy and Referral Agency (DCARA)
M East Bay Innovations (EBI)
N
O
East Bay Services to the Developmentally Disabled
Eden Medical Center
P Family Service Counseling and Community Resource Center (FSCC) Q Kaiser Permanente Medical Facilities
R Regional Center of the East Bay (RCEB)
S
T
U
V
San Leandro Hospital
San Leandro Public Library
San Leandro Senior Community Center – City of San Leandro Service Opportunities for Seniors (SOS) – Meals on Wheels W
X
Y
Z
STARS Community Services Program
Stepping Stones Growth Center (SSGC)
Sutter Care at Home (SCAH)
Social Security Administration (SSA)
Many San Leandro residents use services outside the San Leandro border, and this is much more common than is perceived. (Many interviewees were not aware of any services residents would use outside San Leandro). The table below shows that of the 13,530 residents of zip codes 94577, 94578 and 94579, who received services at a federally-funded Health Center Program for low-income people in 2015, the majority were patients at a health center outside of San Leandro. Of the community health centers most used by San Leandro residents, only Davis Street Community Center is located within the city of San Leandro. For example, 62% of health center patients from the zip code 94579 were served by Asian Health Services, located in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood, while La Clinica De La Raza, whose Alameda County locations primarily are in Oakland, served 35% of patients from 94577 and 33% of patients from 94578. 53 Table 11: Percentage of Patients from San Leandro by Zip Codes Served by Major Health Center Programs (2015) Health Center 94577 94578 94579
Asian Health Services, Inc. 29% 20% 62%
Davis Street Community Center,
Inc. 7% N/A 4%
La Clinica De La Raza Inc. 35% 33% 18%
Lifelong Medical Care 9% 8% N/A
Tiburcio Vasquez Health
Center, Inc. 10% 28% 10%
Tri-City Health Center N/A 3% 3%
Total patients

5,254

5,859

2,417
Source: Uniform Data System, UDS Mapper. Accessed at http://www.udsmapper.org Data about San Leandro residents served by San Leandro Hospital provides additional context. In 2015, 1,030 admissions to San Leandro Hospital were of residents of the three San Leandro zip codes, comprising 34% of all admissions to the hospital. Sixteen percent of all admissions to San Leandro hospital were of residents of 94577; 12% of admissions were of residents of 94578, and 6% of admissions were of residents of 94579. Of all visits to San Leandro Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) in 2015, 29% were by residents of the three San Leandro zip codes, with zip codes 94577 and 94578 each accounting for 13% of all ED visits, and 94579 accounting for 3% of all ED visits that year.

Table 12: Number and Percentage of Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits, San Leandro Hospital (2015)
Patient Zip Code 2015 Hospitalizations 2015 ED Visits63 94577 494 (16%) 3,910 (13%)
94578 365 (12%) 3,962 (13%)
94579 171 (6%) 1,013 (3%)
Total 1,030 (34%) 8,885 (29%)
Source: Community Assessment, Planning, and Evaluation (CAPE), Alameda Public Health Department analysis data from California Office of Statewide Health Plannign and Development (OSHPD) data.

High-Level Mental and Behavioral Health Needs
Mental illness and unmet mental health needs emerged as a theme in every stakeholder interview, particularly in relation to youth and to single homeless adults and homeless parents with children. Additionally, City staff report that the only people who were not able to be successfully

63 The count of Emergency Department (ED) visits does not include patients who were then admitted to San Leandro Hospital, to avoid duplicate counts. Therefore, the number of ED visits in this table is less than the total number of ED visits. Typically, about 15% of visitors to the ED are admitted to the same hospital. Patients who visited the San Leandro Hospital ED and then were admitted to San Leandro Hospital here are counted only in the hospitalizations category.
54 housed through the San Leandro Homeless Compact had unmet high-level mental and behavioral health needs.

San Leandro had the third-highest number of emergency medical services transports for involuntary psychiatric holds (5150 holds) among cities in the county in the first quarter of 2015:
a total of 535 holds, 126 or 31% of which were repeat holds.64 Another recent report found that San Leandro residents, who make up 6% of Alameda County’s population, accounted for 12% of people with one or more psychiatric hospitalizations, and 8% of people with four or more psychiatric hospitalizations in the county in 2011-12. County-wide, among those who experienced one or more psychiatric hospitalization, 17% were adolescents ages 13-17, 14% were transition-age youth ages 18-24, 31% were ages 25-39, 32% were ages 40-59, and 6% were seniors age 60 or older.65
While approximately 12% of services located in San Leandro are mental health services (including individual and family counseling, inpatient and outpatient mental health services, psychiatric services, and transitional mental health services), stakeholder interviews indicate service gaps for people who need more intensive assistance even to access services because they are unable to following up on referrals and appointments and need help with transportation.

People experiencing severe mental health crises because of unmet mental health needs often come to the attention of the police. Across Alameda County, efforts have been made to train police departments in Crisis Intervention Training, which aims to equip police officers with the skills to deescalate situations involving mental health crises. According to the San Leandro Police Department, 49 officers (66% of all officers), 13 dispatchers, and two PST’s have had Crisis Intervention Training.
66 Additionally, substance abuse was cited in several stakeholder interviews as both a need and a barrier to accessing services among some unsheltered homeless older adults and some homeless parents with children.

Child and Family Enrollment in CalFresh
CalFresh, which is known nationally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and formerly called Food Stamps, is the program that assists eligible low-income people to purchase

64 Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services and Oakland Police Department (2016). Slides from presentation to Alameda County Board of Supervisors. “Mobile Evaluation Team Project Update.” Accessed at http://www.acgov.org/board/bos_calendar/documents/DocsAgendaReg_9_26_16/HEALTH%20CARE%20SERVI CES/Regular%20Calendar/BHCS_Oakland_Policy_Dept_Mobile_Evaluation_Team_9_26_16.pdf 65 Resource Development Associates. (2014) Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services Report on the AB1421 Planning Process. Accessed at http://www.acbhcs.org/docs/2014/BHCS_AB1421_Planning_Process.pdf 66 Email correspondence between Jeanette Dong, Recreation and Human Services Director, and Chief Tudor, San Leandro Police Department.
55 healthful food. Approximately one in ten San Leandro residents was enrolled in CalFresh in 2013, with smaller numbers of residents participating in other social services programs.

Table 13: Number of San Leandro Residents Participating in Alameda County Social Services Agency Programs (2013)
Participants in Social Services Agency Programs, 2013
Number
of San
Leandro
Residents
CalFresh (formerly called Food Stamps)

8,600
CalWORKs (aid to eligible families with children)

2,551
General Assistance (aid to indigent adults with no other means of support)

555
Foster Care (temporary, safe living arrangements for children who cannot remain safely at home)

64 Adoption Assistance (aid to families who adopt foster children with special needs)

58 KinGAP (aid to relative caregivers of children who would otherwise be placed in foster care with nonrelatives)

20 Source: Alameda County Social Services Agency
Compared with Alameda County, a lower percentage of CalFresh recipients in San Leandro are children, which might indicate that some eligible parents are not being reached through benefits enrollment efforts.

Figure 17: Percentage of CalFresh Participants Under Age 18 (2013) Source: Alameda County Social Services Agency
The following map shows the number of households receiving public assistance in the previous year, for the five-year period 2010-2014. San Leandro has a many block groups with rather high counts of

46.6%

54.1%
San Leandro Alameda County
56 households receiving public assistance, mostly through the central corridor, which correlates loosely with the population of people with disabilities.

Map 11: Households Receiving Public Assistance in Past 12 Months, by Block Group (2010 to 2014) Source: Census Bureau. (2015). American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for 2010-2014 Anticipated Cuts to the Safety Net
Many experts anticipate cuts at the federal level to programs serving low-income people.

Major cuts to safety net programs have been proposed or are underway, from repeal of the 57 Affordable Care Act, to block-granting67 of Medicaid (Medi-Cal), and cuts to SNAP (CalFresh) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). San Leandro’s Recreation and Human Services Department can use its leverage as a funder, advocate, and convener to respond by strengthening the local safety net to protect the most vulnerable residents.

While city-level data about hunger or food insecurity are not publicly available, data about Alameda County can give us a picture of the food-related needs of San Leandrans, including who is most likely to be food insecure. Food insecurity, according to Feeding America, is “lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods;” an estimated 14.9% of Alameda County residents – and 19.4% of children – were food insecure in 2014.68 Among food insecure residents, an estimated 36% have incomes over 200% of the federal poverty level, which makes them ineligible for federal nutrition assistance programs.

An estimated 47% of low-income adults in Alameda County (those with incomes below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level) were food insecure in the 2013-2015 period. Particularly vulnerable groups of low-income adults included: renters (58% food insecure), noncitizens (57% food insecure), and people with disabilities (54% food insecure).69 Bolstering the local safety net already is a priority of ALL-IN Alameda County, which has identified hunger and the inadequacy of income assistance for people with disabilities through SSI as top priorities.

Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence
The issue of domestic violence came up in stakeholder interviews, both as an area of need and as an area in which successful collaboration is occurring, particularly through the San Leandro Domestic Violence Task Force. Domestic violence-related calls for assistance in San Leandro have fluctuated in recent years, from a high of 334 in 2011 to a low of 249 in 2006.

67 Block-granting means ending the federal government’s commitment to guarantee enrollment in a program to all who qualify and instead giving each state a lump-sum figure for that program. 68 Feeding America. (2016) Map the Meal Gap: Overall Food Insecurity in California by County in 2014 and Overall Food Insecurity in California by County in 2014 accessed at:
http://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2014/overall/california/county/alameda. 69 UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. California Health Interview Survey (2013, 2014, 2015). Accessed at:
http://ask.chis.ucla.edu.
58 Table 14: Domestic Violence-Related Calls for Assistance, San Leandro (2005-2014) 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
TOTAL
CALLS 254 249 258 283 273 310 334 273 289 253
No
Weapon
Involved 2 58 13 1 6 16 10 19 18 15
Weapon
Involved 252 191 245 282 267 294 324 254 271 238
Firearm 29 6 7 3 2 4 2 3 2 2
Knife or
Cutting
Instrument 4 6 7 5 7 8 11 7 0 11
Other
Dangerous
Weapon 7 20 25 31 30 37 38 27 26 20
Personal
Weapon 212 159 206 243 228 245 273 217 243 205
Not
Reported 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Source: California Dept. of Justice, Criminal Justice Statistics Center. Accessed at https://oag.ca.gov/crime/cjsc/stats/domesticviolence Approximately one in 20 high school students in San Leandro Unified School District reported that they been hit, slapped, or intentionally physically hurt by a boyfriend/girlfriend in the past year. Rates were highest among non-traditional students, who are enrolled in alternative or continuation schools.

Table 15: SLUSD Students Who Reported Experiencing Dating Violence in the Past Year, by Grade Level (2011-2013)
Grade
7th Grade 4.6%
9th Grade 5.5%
11th Grade 5.7%
Non-Traditional 6.7%
Source: As cited on kidsdata.org, California Department of Education, California Healthy Kids Survey and California Student Survey (WestEd).

Section IV: Recommendations

1. Articulate and communicate strategies and priorities for the various roles the Recreation and Human Services Department plays. Stakeholder interviews revealed considerable enthusiasm for the recent accomplishments of the Department. Delineating the ways in which the Department can address human services needs could build on that enthusiasm and generate additional momentum as stakeholders, service users, and other residents understand how and where they might be involved in future efforts. 59 • Funder: Given that the Department will not be able to meet all of the human service needs of all residents, it can prioritize using its funds to seed innovative responses to emerging community needs, to help nonprofit service providers leverage funds from other sources, and to fill gaps in services at the County level. • Advocate: Within Alameda County, the Department can raise awareness of the current economic and social needs of San Leandro residents, and advocate to ensure equitable access by San Leandro residents to County human services.

Additionally, the City can join with others across the County to advocate for meeting common unmet needs.
• Convener: The Department currently acts as a convener across sectors and departments (e.g. the task forces on homelessness and domestic violence).

2. Increase awareness of services outside of San Leandro. As a relatively small city, San Leandro is unlikely to contain within its borders all of the services its diverse residents need.

Many residents already seek services outside of San Leandro, but our stakeholder interviews indicate that this is not well understood and it may be difficult for some residents to find information about services outside the city. Decision-makers including members of San Leandro’s commissions will make higher quality decisions if they have a good understanding of how services within San Leandro fit into the landscape of services in the county.

3. Increase the quality of communication about human services available to San Leandro residents. This includes ensuring that materials and communications are in multiple languages, including the most common Asian languages spoken by San Leandro residents who speak English less than very well. In the course of this analysis, we came across a number of paper-based lists of services in various public buildings that were out of date or less than comprehensive. Given that 2-1-1 can provide referrals in multiple languages across many areas of need, 2-1-1 could feature more prominently in communications about services. Addressing the language needs of San Leandro’s residents (especially elders) who speak English less than very well is particularly critical.

4. Convene cross-sector stakeholders to plan for the likely cuts to programs serving low-income people at the federal level. Major cuts to safety net programs have been proposed, from Medicaid (Medi-Cal) and Medicare, to child care, from SNAP (CalFresh) to Supplemental Security Income; and San Leandro’s Recreation and Human Services Department can use its leverage as a funder, advocate, and convener to respond and protect the most vulnerable residents.

5. Increase opportunities for a culturally and economically diverse group of residents – including residents who use human services – to participate in setting priorities for human services and in decision making about funding. A number of other municipalities – including Vallejo, Oakland, New York City, Chicago, and Minneapolis – have found that a participatory budgeting process,70 which engages neighborhood residents in proposing and voting on projects in their neighborhood, can result in better allocation of

70 Public Agenda. (2016) Public Spending, by the People: Participatory Budgeting in the United States and Canada in 2014 - 15.

Accessed at https://www.publicagenda.org/pages/public-spending-by-the-people. 60 resources, increased trust, and greater equity.71 The City of San Leandro might consider engaging in participatory budgeting.72

6. Create opportunities for other City of San Leandro departments to address human services needs, thereby bringing a human-centered perspective to other departments.

Recent successes in this area have included incorporating the San Leandro Police Department into the Homelessness and Housing Task Force and the partnership between the Library and the Recreation and Human Services Department to expand services to Spanish-speaking families with young children through funding from First 5 Alameda County.

7. Engage multi-sector partners to plan for meeting the needs of San Leandro’s diverse communities, including those most affected by poverty: Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. This would include leveraging service providers located outside San Leandro (e.g. Asian Mental Health Services), as well as providers within the city, to meet human services needs in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways.

9. Develop a formal food security program, given the informal network of food pantries and providers giving food to those in need and the frequent concerns raised in focus groups and interviews.

71 P2P Foundation. Participatory Budgeting: The Benefits of Citizen Engagement. Accessed at http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Participatory_Budgeting#The_Benefits_of_Citizen_Engagement:_a_.28Brief.29_Review _of_the_Evidence.
72 A collection of resources about participator budgeting can be found on the website of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development at https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/participatory-budgeting/. 61 Appendix A
Human Services Located in San Leandro City Limits (2015) Source: Data provided to Urban Strategies Council by Eden I & R, Inc. 2-1-1 Alameda County 62 Table 16: Human Services Organizations in San Leandro City Limits, by Service Type (2015) Location
on Map
Basic Needs
C Asian Health Services/Asian Community Mental Health Specialty Mental Health Service.

I
City of San Leandro- Housing Services Division Homebuyer Program
Home Improvement/Accessibility,
Residential Housing Options
J Davis Street Family Resource Center - DSFRC Emergency Food L East Bay Innovations (EBI) California Community
Transitions (CCT)
Supportive Housing
T San Leandro Senior Community Center – City of San
Leandro
Local Transportation
U Service Opportunities for Seniors, Inc. - SOS/Meals On Wheels Meals On Wheels
Meals
Customer Service
Y United States Government - Social Security Administration (SSA)
Records/Licenses/Permits
Criminal Justice and Legal Services
A Alameda County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Adolescent Programs
Guardians ad Litem
G Building Futures with Women and Children Crime Victim Support H CALICO Center CALICO (Child Abuse Listening,
Interviewing and Coordination)
Family Law
I City of San Leandro Housing Services Division Homebuyer Program
Landlord/Tenant Assistance
Environment and Public Health/Safety
B Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) Safety Education Programs Health Care
B Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) Health Education, Mother and Infant Care, Pediatric Evaluation
R San Leandro Hospital Hospitals
J Davis Street Family Resource Center - DSFRC Dental Care, Disease/Disability Specific Screening/Diagnosis
K Deaf Counseling Advocacy and Referral Agency (DCARA) Independent Living Skills Instruction
L East Bay Innovations (EBI) Home/Community Based
Developmental Disabilities
Programs
M East Bay Services to the Developmentally Disabled Home/Community Based Developmental Disabilities
Programs
N Eden Medical Center Condition Specific Rehabilitation Services, Occupational Therapy,
Physical Therapy, Speech and
Hearing, Therapeutic Exercise
63 P Kaiser Permanente Medical Facilities Health Insurance/Dental Coverage, Hospital Based Outpatient Services,
Hospitals
Q Regional Center of the East Bay (RCEB) Pediatric Evaluation W Stepping Stones Growth Center (SSGC) Stepping Stones
Growth Center
Home/Community Based
Developmental Disabilities
Programs
X Sutter Care at Home (SCAH) Home Health Care
Income Support and Employment
L East Bay Innovations (EBI) Job Development
Individual and Family Life
E Black Adoption Placement and Research Center Adoption Services F Boys and Girls Club of San Leandro Youth Development
G Building Futures with Women and Children Community
Outreach and Education
Support Groups
J Davis Street Family Resource Center - DSFRC Administration Volunteer Opportunities, Child Care Providers
L East Bay Innovations (EBI) California Community
Transitions (CCT)
Case/Care Management
N Eden Medical Center Physical Fitness
M Family Service Counseling and Community Resource Center (FSCC)
Family Based Services
T San Leandro Senior Community Center – City of San Leandro Recreational, Leisure, Arts, Travel Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services
E Building Futures with Women and Children Community
Outreach and Education
Crisis Intervention
J Davis Street Family Resource Center - DSFRC Conjoint Counseling V STARS Community Services Program Counseling Services
Organizational/Community/International Services
I City of San Leandro Administrative Entities, Public
Awareness/Education
T San Leandro Senior Community Center – City of San Leandro Administrative Entities 64 Appendix B
List of Stakeholders Interviewed
The questions and themes emerging from conversations with stakeholders identified by the Recreation and Human Services Department have shaped our data analysis and informed our policy recommendations. We conducted ten interviews with 14 key stakeholders (listed in order interviewed):

Jason Toro, Manager, Barbara Lee Center for Health and Wellness Rose Padilla Johnson, CEO, Davis Street Family Resource Center Liz Varela, Executive Director, Building Futures with Women and Children Mayor Pauline Cutter
Victor Aguilar, Human Services Commission Chair and Janice Woycheshin, Senior Commission Chair
Surlene Grant, Former Council Member
Vice Mayor Ursula Reed and Council Member Benny Lee
San Leandro Unified School District Superintendent Mike McLoughlin Council Members Deborah Cox, Corina Lopez, and Jim Prola Chris Zapata, City Manager
Acknowledgments
We would like to extend special thanks for sharing insights and data to Jeanette Dong, Director of Recreation and Human Services, all of the stakeholders who participated in interviews; Consuelo Zuluaga at San Leandro Unified School District, Chris Hwang from First 5 Alameda County, Haleh Hatami from the Alameda Health Consortium, Melanie Moore from ALL IN – Alameda County, and Chief Tudor of the San Leandro Police Department; and for assistance with scheduling and other logistics to Fifi Jahan, Toya Sonnier, Caroline Hernandez, Adrian Williams, Michelle Mayfield, Jasmine Donnelly Bateson, and Susan Ralston.

San Leandro City CouncilMay 19, 2025

San Leandro City Council
May 19, 2025