More Cupertino residents using nonprofit’s food, rental assistance

Of the 1,207 new clients at West Valley Community Services in fiscal year 2020-21, 29% were from Cupertino.

According to the WVCS annual report, that represents an increase in total clients from Cupertino from 251 in 2019-20 to 320 in 2020-21. In total, the number of new clients using its rental and food assistance programs rose from 989 in 2019-20.

Based in Cupertino, the nonprofit also serves residents living below the property line in Los Gatos and West San Jose. WVCS served a total of 3,168 clients in 2020-21.

Cupertino-based clients were 59% single adults, 23% households with children and 18% households with adults only. Of the households receiving financial assistance, 35 were in Cupertino.

“While demand has remained steady and our numbers this year are higher than they were in the year that was pre-COVID, our rental assistance numbers and our food distribution numbers are among the highest in our history,” WVCS Executive Director Josh Selo said, adding that the nonprofit saw an increase of 2,000 clients across the region in 2019-20 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WVCS’s client base also increased in the other communities it serves–by 23% in Los Gatos, 6% in Saratoga and 42% in West San Jose.

“In general, our client base is driven most specifically by the amount of affordable housing in a community,” Selo said. “If a community has more affordable housing, there are more people eligible for services. It’s also driven by the number of unhoused folks in our community.”

While the pandemic forced the nonprofit to adapt to unprecedented changes, Selo said it also increased WVCS’s accessibility. Now, instead of making a trip to the Cupertino office, clients can set up virtual meetings with case managers. The WVCS Park-It Market, which serves as a “shoppable” food pantry at no cost to clients, stops at De Anza College in Cupertino on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month.

“That’s a tool in our toolkit that will continue, even as COVID recedes into the background,” Selo said. “We feel we need to be as client-centric as we can. There are already so many stumbling blocks facing our clients; we want to make things easier for them access-wise.”

Selo said many WVCS clients are referred by county or city agencies, and the nonprofit also does outreach at laundromats, coffee shops and homeless encampments.

“I would say part of the reason that we were so successful in meeting this increased demand during COVID was because we’d worked for many years on these close relationships between all of these different partners to be here for the community,” Selo said.

WVCS’s revenues for the fiscal year were a little more than $8.7 million; expenses were almost $5.8 million.

Anne Gelhaus contributed to this report.