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March is Social Work Month, and we couldn’t let it go by without a shoutout to ALRP’s incredible social work team, comprised of Kim Kruse and Nancy Martin!

We talked to Kim and Nancy about their critical role at ALRP and the impact they have on our clients every day.

Nancy and Kim at ALRP’s offices

Hi Kim and Nancy! Could you introduce yourselves a bit and tell us about your role and background at ALRP?

Kim: Hi, I’m Kim Kruse. I’m a licensed clinical social worker and the Director of Social Services for both ALRP and Legal Assistance to the Elderly.

ALRP introduced its social work program four years ago when Prop F established the Tenant Right to Counsel in San Francisco, and organizations started receiving funding to provide free legal representation to anyone who received an eviction notice. My position was covered under that grant funding. Since then, I’ve provided wraparound services to make sure our clients can have success with their housing and health care. And then we were able to hire Nancy in March two years ago.

Nancy: My name is Nancy Martin. I’m a social worker under the housing team at ALRP. I’m currently obtaining my master’s degree in social work at San Francisco State, and so in addition to supporting the housing team as a staff social worker, I’m also an MSW intern for ALRP’s HIV Consumer Advocacy Program. My next rotation will be with the work ALRP does on wills and estate planning, and end of life care.

What does your day-to-day work look like with ALRP?

Kim: The day-to-day work starts with regular communication with the staff attorneys regarding wraparound services and resources for our clients to have successful outcomes in their legal cases. So if it’s a housing case, that means putting in rental assistance, applying for subsidies, making sure that they are connected to medical treatment … Our clients need to be cared for in all manners of their life, so they can maintain good health. And when you have stability and housing, you then have more time to actually make sure you go to the doctor, and you take your medication, and you are, you know, taking care of your whole body.

We work from a harm reduction approach. Many of our clients do have substance use disorder. So we approach that in a compassionate, non-judgmental way. We have open dialogue to make sure that we are communicating best practices for them to continue to use in a less harmful manner to themselves.

Nancy: What’s interesting about it is that we may have a plan of what our day is gonna look like, and it turns out to be a totally different schedule than what we initially set for ourselves, because, you know, sometimes a client is in crisis, or a client needs us at a specific time, or an attorney needs us. But it’s pretty much home visits, applying for subsidies, back rent assistance, and collaborating with attorneys, on a daily basis.

Kim: And working with a lot of other social services agencies within San Francisco, too, and not just related to HIV. Besides clinics, there are citywide case managers, onsite supportive staff for housing, all sorts of other social service providers.

Could you give us an example of how this all works out?

Nancy: Sure! So, we were working with this client for a little over a year now. And he’s self-employed as a hairstylist, but during COVID his work really reduced, and he had some health troubles, and so now he owed about $21,000 in back rent. And we were able to get him support through the San Francisco Emergency Rental Assistance Program, plus some funding from Season of Sharing, to completely clear the back rent.

And then moving forward, we got him a Catholic Charities TSP subsidy. TSP, the tiered subsidy program, is a subsidy through Catholic Charities, and it’s for people living with HIV. But a main roadblock with TSP is that you must show that the client has income. Because the way it’s calculated is the client pays 30% of their income towards rent, and then the subsidy kicks in. And for this particular client, since he was self-employed, his income fluctuated. And he hadn’t done taxes for some time, so calculating his portion of the rent, and documenting it all, was difficult.

So it was working a lot with Catholic Charities, to try to get him into the program and get his income situated. But we got him through!

That’s amazing.

Nancy: I think what I most enjoy about the work is when we’re able to save a client’s housing. Just seeing how appreciative the clients are at the end of the day, and being able to say, you know, I saved someone’s housing today is something that I love about my job.

What about you, Kim?

Kim: I would say, what I what I like about the job is the is the population. I like meeting the clients where they are. They come in, yes, for a particular legal reason, but there are usually other things going on. So then it’s building a rapport, building trust with them, and letting them express what’s really going on in their life. And coming to them with a very non-judgmental attitude. And being like, okay, well, let’s try to figure out what’s gonna work best for you to help you get to where we can have some success.

And the success is measured from what the client’s goals are, and that can be something as simple as, you know, making a doctor’s appointment, because the person hasn’t seen their primary care physician for a long time. Or figuring out how to open a bank account, because they get Social Security and don’t want to use the Direct Express debit card, and so then they can pay their rent more easily. Or maybe it’s figuring out more of a harm reduction approach to their drug use.

It’s all these different things, and having really open conversations with them, and expressing to them that we care about them, that ALRP cares about them, and that usually all the other people who are in their larger wraparound services team actually really care about them. I know at times our clients feel like they have zero people in the community that actually care about them. And I think that when we can show otherwise, that provides them a sense of like, Okay, I can do this. A sense of hope.