SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Forge Development Partners, Bridge Investment Group and the Danna Foundation will hold a Youth and Family Fun Day / Homeless Benefit on Saturday, October 5 from 12 to 3 p.m. at Boeddeker Park. Join in fun lawn games, activities for children, a bounce house, live music and refreshments. The San Francisco Fire Department will be there as well providing an up close look at a fire engine.
“Forge looks forward to meeting our neighbors and forging close ties as we work to bring new workforce housing to 361 Turk and 145 Leavenworth,” said Richard Hannum, founder of Forge. “Helping our community is a key part of who we are and to that end we’ve teamed up with the Danna Foundation, the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, and the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco to stuff roughly 1,400 backpacks filled with necessities for unsheltered individuals as part of the Danna Foundation’s We Got Your Back initiative.”
Volunteers will fill backpacks from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. with daily necessities like reusable water bottles, toiletries, socks and other items. These will be provided to Tenderloin nonprofits including Compass Family Services, Larkin Street Youth Services, Code Tenderloin and Care Through Touch Institute for distribution to the homeless.
“It’s wonderful to see Forge, Bridge and the Danna Foundation partnering with local nonprofits to enable housing and lend a helping hand to those in need,” said Code Tenderloin founder Del Seymour. “These are the necessities we sometimes take for granted, and by providing them in a backpack it makes it easy for the unsheltered to pick them up and take them with them wherever they go.”
The premise for the We Got Your Back initiative started around 15 years ago when one of the co-founders of the Danna Foundation, Anna Stanger, saw an elderly homeless woman walking down the street in San Diego with her possessions slung over her shoulder in a trash bag. She was disturbed by the sight of the woman carrying a heavy weight unevenly across her back and went to the store, bought a backpack, filled it with necessities and brought it to the homeless woman.
“From that small beginning, the idea took off,” said Dan Stanger, Vice Chairman of Bridge Investment Group. The Foundation was started in 2016 and in 2017 We Got Your Back was formalized as an ongoing, national campaign.
“Today, the backpack program is a central part of our homeless outreach because it allows us to have an immediate positive impact to an unsheltered individual in need,” said Jack Ryser, Executive Director of the Danna Foundation.
The Family Fun Day and Homeless Benefit is all part of Forge and Bridge’s larger efforts to become an integral member of the community while they construct and manage the first privately funded workforce housing development in San Francisco, known as TL 361. Through a combination of innovative product design and technology with unique investment financing and management, TL 361 will deliver new housing stock affordable to the workforce in the urban core, with a minimum of 51% of units to be rented to those earning a maximum of 80% of the area median income.
“We work closely with our community partners to give back in ways that make the most sense for the community,” said Richard Hannum. “Forge and Bridge are committed to being good community partners while we build and manage this new workforce housing and look forward to meeting all our new neighbors today and in the future.”
Forge Development Partners, LLC: Forge Development Partners seeks to provide much needed housing to the workforce that is continually being squeezed out of American cities by using a solutions-oriented approach to building and managing their projects. All of their efforts aim to improve the user experience for the residents and the surrounding community. Forge is committed to not only making its buildings and the construction process less impactful, but actually beneficial for the environment, with buildings that are net energy producers as opposed to consumers. Their efforts are apparent not only in their innovative construction techniques, but also the concierge-like experience they provide to residents –offer high-tech solutions that make daily life in their developments more pleasant for all of their residents, at a price point that offers the best value for the cost.
Bridge Investment Group: Bridge Investment Group is a privately held real estate investment management firm with $16 billion in assets under management. Bridge combines its 2,600-person, nationwide operating platform with specialized teams of investment professionals focused on select US real estate verticals, which Bridge believes offer above-market opportunity: multifamily, office, seniors housing, affordable housing, opportunity zones, and debt strategies.