DignityMoves, the organization seeking to reduce homelessness in Santa Barbara County, has received tremendous community and philanthropic support since it started its work on the Central Coast in 2022.
However, financial assistance from one source in particular — Sara Miller McCune — has laid the groundwork for further support.
Miller McCune is known for her business acumen running SAGE Publishing with subsidiary companies and sales offices in Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; London; India; East Asia; Melbourne, Australia; and Latin America.
She is also known for her generosity through the McCune Foundation, which supports projects that address critical issues in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties by empowering and mobilizing excluded populations.
DignityMoves lines up perfectly with this vision of support.
In this case, McCune’s financial support for DignityMoves didn’t come from the McCune Foundation but directly from McCune herself with a $50,000 gift for the Santa Barbara Street Village in 2022; another gift of $500,000 for La Posada Village in 2023; and a more recent donation of $1 million for the future Family Village, all in the greater Santa Barbara area.
“This show of support from one of the Central Coast’s most respected and successful community members has enhanced the credibility of what we were attempting to achieve,” said Jack Lorenz.
“Moreover, Sara Miller McCune’s support also helped leverage additional support from other philanthropists and foundations,” said Lorenz.
Early on, McCune and her team recognized what DignityMoves was attempting to do with the combination of Interim Supportive Housing Villages, land donated by the county, and supportive services through our partners, including Good Samaritan.
Quick success in moving a number of DignityMoves residents to more permanent housing was also something that inspired confidence.
“The steadfast dedication and conviction of [county] Supervisor Laura Capps that the DignityMoves’ model was one that would dramatically change the course of how we address and solve homelessness in Santa Barbara was quite convincing,” McCune said.
“The model of using county land and modular construction to accelerate an otherwise laborious process, particularly in Santa Barbara, of getting new housing built was one aspect of our work that was particularly intriguing to McCune, as well as the government, nonprofit, and philanthropic collaboration,” DignityMoves said.
Using donated money for construction and county money primarily for supportive services helped assure a high rate of success in moving people off the streets into permanent housing.
To date, DignityMoves has built three interim housing communities in Santa Barbara County — Santa Barbara Street Village, La Posada Village off Hollister Avenue, and Hope Village in Santa Maria — with a total of 243 beds and the capacity to serve some 350 residents per year.
Residents are empowered to move from these “villages” into more permanent housing, according to Dignity Moves.
Since the first community village opened in downtown Santa Barbara, DignityMoves and its partners have been dedicated to uplifting the lives of people experiencing homelessness in Santa Barbara County, the organization said.
With assistance from dedicated organizations and individuals like McCune, providing enough housing for everyone is proving possible, the group said.
McCune is co-founder and president of the McCune Foundation, based in Ventura, which supports change through building social capital in two Central Coast counties.
She is a former member of the Social Science Research Council’s board of directors and is a past chair of its visiting committee.
Previously, she served on the board of directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.