Editor’s note: This article was updated to remove the identity of one of the participants in Teen Challenge.
WATSONVILLE — Using the bones of a gutted former Ford dealership as its starting point, the nonprofit Christian-based Teen Challenge Monterey Bay is building a brand-new women’s center in downtown Watsonville that is expected to open by year’s end.
For those such as Steffanie Hubbard, 31, of Lodi, said the pending 20,000-square-foot Grace Harbor Women’s Center at 55 Brennan St. will be more than a new women’s shelter and location for female Teen Challenge recovery program clients. It will be a way to “love the unlovable.”
Hubbard herself graduated from Teen Challenge program in early May and was hired to work as Grace Harbor’s outreach coordinator. She first joined the program due to a court-ordered diversionary mandate in November 2018, she said.
“I was an IV-heroin user for 10 years. I was homeless. I sold drugs. I did drugs. I sold myself. I was involved in gangs and I was addicted to anger and addicted to violence. That was normal for me, that was the way I lived,” Hubbard said during an interview last month. “All I want to do is show people that if I can do it, they can do it. I want to be a living, walking, breathing testimony for women that there is a better chance at life. You are valuable, you are worthy, you’re not just a junky that’s meant to go to prison or die on the streets, to have no value.”
Program goals
According to Teen Challenge officials, “the shelter is being built in response to the rise in homelessness and at-risk women and children in the area.” According to the most recent Santa Cruz County homeless census, conducted on one day in January 2019, there were 370 homeless people living in Watsonville — about a third female — with a total of 257 people living without shelter in the city.
Among those participating in the Teen Challenge program is a 21-year-old woman who asked not to be identified. The young woman joined Teen Challenge in 2018, three years after she first began abusing methamphetamine. Coming from a physically and sexually abusive household and roaming the streets since age 12, the 21-year-old said she had little in the way of formal schooling. She hopes to soon begin studying accounting.
“I was failing since middle school. So, I didn’t see me graduating high school or getting my GED. I always had the drive to do so, but I was harboring a lot of stuff from my abuses,” she said. “I just couldn’t move forward with my life until I came here to Teen Challenge. I’m still healing and growing into who God has called me to be.”
The young woman called her involvement with Teen Challenge “a second chance at life.”
“I hold the keys now,” she said. “Nothing can shake me. And even if something shakes me, it makes me put my roots down deeper and makes me stronger.”
Meeting needs
The women’s center will provide 42 emergency overnight shelter beds for homeless and at-risk women and women with children, offered alongside meals, showers, clean clothes, bus passes, work and life skills training, educational support and case management. The other half of the building will be set aside for the free residential recovery program, a minimum 13-month course with 50 beds for women with “life-controlling issues” such as drug and alcohol addiction and mental health struggles, serving as a counterpart to the men’s Pajaro Rescue Mission. Teen Challenge, which serves adults over the age of 18, advertises a recovery success rate for its participants of 78-85% for at least five years after leaving the program.
“For the community, it’s huge,” Teen Challenge Monterey Bay Executive Director Mike Borden said. “There really is no year-round shelter for women and women with children (in South County).”
The new building also will include space for the new Pregnancy Resource Center. The Lighthouse Treasures Shoppe, located at the same site for the past six years, will continue its operations, now joined by the Rustic Table Restaurant, both of which help to supplement community donations to support the program’s operational costs. With the help of the restaurant and retail store, clients are able to “be in this facility and write your resume at the same time,” Borden said. Nextdoor to the women’s center is a Teen Challenge-owned single-family home that will house additional program participants with children.
“The goal isn’t just to warehouse people,” Borden said. “It’s to give them the means out of homelessness in a safe and healthy place.”
More information about the shelter and donation options are available at teenchallengemb.org.
