What would it take to keep alive Modesto’s Downtown Streets Team, an otherwise doomed project that improves downtown’s appearance while helping hundreds of unhoused people?
Potential solutions boil down to two options: 1). Find a local nonprofit willing to take over Downtown Streets’ beautification-by-homeless program or 2). Establish a new nonprofit to run it.
Some Modesto leaders are eager to see the program continue despite its parent organization’s plan to cease operations Oct. 31 in the 16 Northern California cities hosting its programs. Modesto expects to have a continuation plan by then, Community and Economic Development Director Jessica Hill said.
And a well-established and respected Modesto nonprofit is willing to explore possibilities.
“Yes, we’re looking into and considering it, seeing what we can do,” said Jason Conway, chief executive of Modesto Gospel Mission. The mission provides food, shelter and programs for unhoused people but is unrelated to Downtown Streets.
A few years ago, Conway briefly ran Downtown Disciples, a local effort with a similar trash-pickup-by-homeless program, but it went away in 2019 when Downtown Streets came and filled the need.
Program for unhoused is a Modesto darling
For people willing to pick up trash in Modesto these past six years, Downtown Streets has given noncash stipends to obtain food, clothing and medicine, and has helped them find jobs and housing. It’s worked well in the city, say leaders and observers of chronic homelessness.
“The problem is not desire – the desire is always there to fill a gap,” Conway continued in an interview with The Modesto Focus. “The problem is insurance,” he surmised, and perhaps legal tanglements.
In email exchanges, Downtown Streets Chief Executive Julie Gardner sidestepped specific questions about the organization’s downfall and instead shared a press release blaming “the current political and financial environment.” That had members of the Modesto City Council scratching their heads, while also grasping for ways to keep the program going locally.
Nearly 400 participants have picked up 2.6 million pounds of trash from downtown Modesto, and Downtown Streets has helped 182 people find housing and 127 find jobs, the city said in a press release. Across its 16 cities, the parent organization – founded in Palo Alto two decades ago – has removed 33 million gallons of trash, housed 2,214 people and helped 2,105 find jobs, its website says.
“The Downtown Streets Team helps people on the verge of homelessness get on a pathway to sustainability, all while reducing blight. That’s a win-win all around,” said Modesto Councilman Eric Alvarez, whose district includes the downtown area.
“I think we have a responsibility to reimagine that program here locally and be creative with public-private partnerships to fund it” without soaking taxpayers, Alvarez said.
Other Modesto organizations might be interested as well in building on Downtown Streets’ success. City Hall will weigh options with the goal of having a plan in place by Halloween, said Jessica Hill, Modesto’s community and economic development director.
While the crisis of homelessness is vexing, Modesto’s multipronged Camp2Home approach to the stubborn problem is viewed by other areas as a model of success. Downtown Streets is a key component, Hill said. In December, the League of California Cities honored Modesto with its statewide Helen Putnam Award for the city’s partnership with Downtown Streets.
What went wrong with the statewide Downtown Streets Team?
Local supporters, however, will want a clearer picture of whatever brought down Downtown Streets Team’s parent organization – so mistakes aren’t repeated.
The culprit may be legal trouble or difficulty lining up costly insurance, Conway said. A while back, Caltrans approached him with an opportunity for the mission to participate in a project, he said – but inability to secure insurance kept it from happening.
Modesto City Hall requires that Downtown Streets obtain $1 million insurance policies in each of four areas: worker compensation, general liability, auto liability, and professional liability. Premiums eat up more than 16% of administrative costs, according to a budget document.
And Downtown Streets’ parent organization has had its share of legal trouble, though not in Modesto.
- In 2019, multiple former employees accused brass of sexual harassment and cultivating a hard-partying, hard-drinking workplace culture.
- In 2021, Downtown Streets agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by paying a combined $170,000 to 72 employees who claimed they were denied overtime wages and mandated meal and rest breaks.
- In 2023, Downtown Streets settled with San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement by agreeing to a settlement benefiting 431 employees who claimed wage violations. Downtown Streets agreed to a payment plan running through 2030. OLSE Director Pat Mulligan said there are ways to obtain payment after an entity folds. “We’ll figure it out,” he said.
- In March 2025, an apparent Downtown Streets Team former employee filed a $35 million complaint alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in June because of the plaintiff’s failure to follow up.
The payoff of reviving Downtown Streets here could be worth the effort if Modesto can avoid pitfalls that doomed the parent organization. So say three City Council members – Nick Bavaro, Chris Ricci and Alvarez – who on Sept. 4 brainstormed options with the organization’s administrators.
‘I’m not giving up’ on Downtown Streets, Modesto leader vows
“The program is designed to build a work ethic, to give people some confidence and self-esteem and get them back into the workforce,” Bavarro said. “I’m not giving up.”
The three councilmen two years ago tried to introduce safe camping, where people could safely rest, eat, shower and receive services like substance abuse or mental health treatment. Modesto Council members Jeremiah Williams, Rosa Escutia-Braaton and David Wright and Mayor Sue Zwahlen reasoned that grouping troubled people together where diseases and drugs are easily shared could prove disastrous. Without majority support, the safe camping idea has been tabled since.
Downtown Streets, meanwhile, seems to have broad support in Modesto, where a Facebook page is packed with photos of smiling people and success stories.
“Modesto has been an extraordinary partner – innovative, resourceful, and unwaveringly supportive throughout the years,” Gardner said. “Local leaders have continually gone above and beyond to champion our work, regularly attending our programs and walking alongside participants to offer encouragement and hope.”
The success of the Downtown Streets Team in the 15 other California cities is harder to gauge. News reports in those cities, from Sacramento to Salinas – Modesto’s is the only one in the San Joaquin Valley – periodically recount millions of gallons of trash removed. But no news items about the parent organization’s imminent closure had appeared as of noon Sept. 4, other than Modesto.
City leadership here decided to put out the word in an Aug. 29 news elease rather than wait for the parent organization to announce it, Hill said, partly because of Modesto’s affection for the program.
City Hall gives Downtown Streets $500,000 a year to support the Modesto program, plus $400,000 in a three-year contract to subsidize housing. Of the first source, $350,000 comes from Measure H, a sales tax surcharge that voters approved in 2022 to bring in extra revenue for services.
That money could swing to a nonprofit – whether existing or brand-new – breathing new life into the program, said Alvarez, Bavarro and Ricci.
“We and numerous residents share a spirit of trying to fix (Downtown Streets) before it goes away for good,” Ricci said. “But we have to identify what happened to them, so it doesn’t happen to us.”
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact Stapley at garth@cvlocaljournalism.org.