Meet Cindy Funkhouser, president and CEO of Sulzbacher Center, Northeast Florida’s largest provider of services for men, women, and children who are experiencing homelessness.
The nonprofit recently opened the inspiring 70-unit Sulzbacher Village for formerly homeless single women, female veterans, and families in Jacksonville. The development includes a pediatric clinic and respite care for homeless individuals recently discharged from local hospitals.
Funkhouser tells us about the new development, how she started working in the field, and the best advice she’s received.
What was your first job?
My first job at age 16 was a gift wrapper at J.C. Penney, and I can wrap a mean gift still today.
What led you to work in affordable housing?
I have worked in the homeless arena for over 15 years. When I initially started in the field, the national “best practice” was to bring people into shelters and address their barriers and then, when and only when they were “ready,” to get them into housing. That model has shifted over the years to the Housing First model. So when we determined that we were completely maxed out at our current campus—the shelter and all the services—and needed to move our women and families off the main campus, we recognized that we needed to build permanent housing not shelter. That led us on the long and interesting journey of low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) and all that entails and enabled us to build a beautiful $20 million village for our women and families.
When did you know you wanted to help people experiencing homelessness?
I had a long 20-plus year career in sales and marketing. In the mid ’80s, I was transferred from our Washington, D.C., sales office to start an office in South Florida. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew decimated most of Miami and all of Homestead. Luckily, I lived a little farther north of the eye and only lost parts of my house and trees. During the next many months, I volunteered through my church in the hardest-hit areas of Miami and Homestead, working a lot with migrant farmworkers. In one night, over 175,000 people in South Florida became homeless. Through this work, I felt a calling to work on the issue of homelessness as my life’s mission. I left my job in corporate America and went back to school to get my master’s in social work. I moved to Jacksonville and interned at a homeless provider called Sulzbacher Center, and the rest as they say is history.
What makes Sulzbacher Village unique?
Sulzbacher Village is not the “plain vanilla” affordable apartment complex. It is 92,000 square feet, and roughly one-third of that space is dedicated to myriad wraparound services. These include a huge pediatric clinic (a Federally Qualified Health Center), a therapeutic early learning center, classrooms, a computer lab for job training, an industrial kitchen used by our local community college for culinary and other classes as well as for our own social enterprise, a children’s program including an art studio, a library and multipurpose area, an eight-unit short-term female veteran wing, a 10-unit female medical respite facility, and so much more.
What’s the one thing you would show a visitor at Sulzbacher Village?
That is hard to decide, I would first show them the huge pediatric clinic that includes primary pediatric care, dental care, optical care, and behavioral health. We built in an area that is considered a “health desert,” and this clinic is open to the entire community.
What was the biggest challenge in developing the new community and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge was raising the private funding for all the programming that was not covered by the LIHTC, roughly $8 million. There were several large capital campaigns going on in our city at the same time. We overcame it by good old-fashioned persistence.
Share an interesting statistic or fact related to homelessness or affordable housing.
Nationally it costs a community between $40,000 to $50,000 per year to keep a person homeless (jail time, emergency room time, social service time, etc.). It costs that same community roughly $15,000 per year to put that same person in permanent supportive housing with all the wraparound services. Literally, it costs the system at large a third of the amount of money to solve homelessness as to perpetuate it.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
My proudest accomplishment was the day about three weeks ago when I accompanied a homeless single dad with three children ages 3, 4, and 5 into his brand-new, fully furnished two-bedroom apartment. They and 69 other families are starting their new life at the Sulzbacher Village, where we know literally thousands of lives will be changed forever in the years to come as people end their homelessness.
Biggest risk you’ve taken that’s paid off:
LIHTCs and becoming a developer of affordable housing.
What’s a move that your organization recently made that others can learn from?
Bring in the experts at the earliest visioning stage of a project and get as many opinions and viewpoints as possible regarding a big vision.
What advice would you give others going into the nonprofit sector or affordable housing business?
Know where your core competencies are and stick to those. For anything else you may want to do, partner with those who do it the best.
Best advice you’ve received:
This is funny, but a mentor told me this adage years ago, and it is now my litany: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It says to me just keep moving forward one step at a time and do not get overwhelmed by thinking of the whole big project all at once.
Besides the usual work items, what’s in your office?
A bookcase full of an eclectic collection of gifts my staff and family have given me over the years.
Favorite fictional character and why?
My kids and I loved the Harry Potter series when they came out, and we read many of the earlier ones together and all of them since and seen all the movies. My favorite character is Hermione. She proved time and again that smart girls are heroes and that loyalty and integrity should be aspired to by everyone.
Favorite way to spend a day off:
Reading or walking on the beach.
What’s next for Cindy Funkhouser?
Continue the fight to end the national disgrace of homelessness.
