Homeless Children's Network (S7 bonus)

Welcome to this bonus episode about Homeless Children's Network (HCN).

Malik Parker is the director of the Jabali Substance Use Disorder (SUD) program at HCN. He is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina, but his mom is from Oakland. He left NC for The Bay the day after he graduated high school in 2011.

Cameron Smith is HCN's director of Afrocentric programs. He is from Columbus, Ohio, but has been in SF for more than 10 years now. Cameron came here on a whim; he had a friend who needed a roommate. His first job in The Bay was in San Jose at the YMCA as a basketball ref. He knew then that he wanted to serve, to give back.

Cameron shares the origin story of Homeless Children's Network. HCN was founded in 1992 with the intent to serve as a connection between six different shelters in The City. Their CEO today, Dr. April Silas, has been with HCN since the beginning. The idea was that folks experiencing homelessness were transitory, and it would be best if services they received in one shelter followed them.

Nowadays, they serve more than 2,500 clients per year. They have around 60 partnerships with other service organizations in The City. Please visit the HCN website for more info.

They are currently in the middle of their Jabali awareness campaign, a partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health that provides services around the fentanyl crisis. Cameron points to the Black population in The City being about 4–5 percent of the total, while Black folks experiencing fentanyl overdose deaths range from 30 to 40 percent of the overall number in SF.

The Jabali campaign aims to bring awareness to treatment as well as warning folks of the dangers of the deadly drug. HCN runs ads on social media and YouTube as well as billboards around town. They aim through these ad campaigns to be as ubiquitous as, say, a Sweet James or Ann Phuong. The goal is to make folks aware of HCN and its services before they might realize they need it.

A big part of Malik's job also involves meeting people where they are, bringing those same messages as HCN's ads. He says that this aspect of his role with HCN is perhaps the most rewarding for him.

Malik has learned a lot in his time with HCN, including in their work with SFDPH. He's uncovered his own biases, which is part of what he works so hard to help others see. He emphasizes for folks the "us" aspect of it all. He says he relishes the give-and-take of seminars, the things he hears people say to one another.

When I mention the United Playaz motto, "It takes the hood to save the hood," we go on a bit of a sidebar about communities looking internally to solve their own issues.

HCN has workforce development programs, and I ask whether anyone who's been through their programs has come back to work with them. That has indeed happened.

Then our conversation shifts to ways that The City has adopted a "tough on crime" approach in the last couple of years to several areas that HCN deals with (see the recall of Chesa Boudin and shift rightward of our Board of Supervisors, among other signs). No one in the room the day we recorded agrees with that approach.

We end this bonus episode with ways that you can get involved with HCN, whether it's donating, volunteering, attending a seminar, or something else. Please visit HCN's website to learn more. Follow them on social media @hcnkidssf.

We recorded this episode at Homeless Children's Network offices in The Fillmore in March 2025.

Photography by Jeff Hunt