PEOPLE NEED HOMES, NOT SHELTERS. 

 Since 2003, Waking the Village (WTV) has offered housing and support so that Sacramento County’s unhoused youth and their children can get busy living rather than surviving. Through our housing programs, youth experience healthy living, intensive case management, parenting support, and career coaching so that they leave prepared to be leaders in their own lives, and leaders in the lives of their children and communities. We are known for our low client to staff ratios and our wrap around approach, embedding education, employment, wellness, prevention, intervention, and early childhood programs within our housing.

Waking the Village launched in 1999 with 17 youth riding 2300 miles across America on bikes. The trip centered on the notion that youth overcoming homelessness, depression, and injustice achieve great things when surrounded with supports that focused on their strengths rather than their challenges. We came back and worked on launching our first transitional housing program. Tubman House opened in 2003 and has provided housing to parenting youth experiencing homelessness and their children using a two-generation approach ever since.

From day one, our youth detail their goals. Our work? Support these goals in healing, housing, career, and developing connections. With over 80% overcoming domestic violence, sexual assault, or exploitation, WTV brings decades of experience addressing trauma, navigating systems, & supporting youth as they stabilize housing, forge supportive connections, and minimize system dependence by securing jobs, furthering education, and fortifying wellness. Over a thousand young parents and children have lived at WTV and over 90% maintain housing stability in the 3 years after exit.

Daily, we house over 90 youth and children, provide preschool care to over 100 children, and lead workshops and employment sessions reaching 30-60 youth a day. We provide outreach and intervention services to over 500 youth annually to prevent homelessness or assist in warm hand offs to shelters and wellness services.

Our current programs include:

Tubman House (2003): Transitional housing program serving pregnant/parenting youth & their children. We welcome pregnant youth, single parents, couples, & children.

Art Beast Studio (2009): Licensed preschool in midtown Sacramento serving 30 children daily.

The Creation District (2015): Outreach and youth leadership hub for unhoused youth. Provides daily workshops that center on the arts, wellness, & leadership. Houses our Prevention and Intervention and Street Leaders Outreach programs, co-locates services with service providers, and leads Youth Action Board, Youth Arts Council, & Project Heal paid peer mentors.

Audre’s Emporium of New Tomorrows (2017): Transitional housing serving youth.

Art Beast Child Development Center (2017): Licensed preschool serving the community and extending free childcare to the children of WTV’s clients.

Muck and Wonder Farm School (2018): Licensed preschool in Arden-Arcade neighborhood serving 40 children.

Prevention & Intervention (2018): WTV moves upstream to prevent homelessness or offer intervention through system navigation, family mediation, eviction prevention, crisis funding, and warm hand offs. Serves youth ages 12 to 25 years old.

The Village (2021): WTV shelter serving 8 young parents & all their children offers low barrier entry and intensive services so that youth exit to best-fit, stable housing.

Street Leaders (2023): Young adults with lived experiences of homelessness train and work as street outreach workers, building connections with unhoused youth that expedite connections to housing and wellness.