Design Matters: Form & Function of Navigation Centers
Workshop Summary
Supportive transitional housing facilities have typically been created ad hoc, either built to maximize efficiency or shoehorned into existing buildings. Purpose-built navigation center projects provide the opportunity to develop a model that accommodates residents’ and service providers’ needs, creating conditions that foster community and social interaction while allowing for personal privacy and dignity. Panelists have extensive experience in the design and construction of navigation centers in San Francisco and the Peninsula, including the County of San Mateo’s newly opened navigation center in Redwood City. This 240-unit facility is the most ambitious project of its type in the Bay Area to date and will serve as a case study in this workshop.
Moderator and Panelists
Moderator – Adrian Gonzalez
Director of Regional Implementation, All Home
As a public sector consultant and program manager, Adrian Gonzales has spent over 12 years advising 50+ public sector agencies, including cities, counties, and nonprofits on how to be more efficient and effective through empirically based program evaluation. In his current role as the Director of Regional Implementation with All Home, Adrian manages the organization’s technical assistance program advising local governments on improving the coordination of their homelessness response systems and advocating for concurrent investments into interim and permanent housing solutions and homelessness prevention programming. Adrian previously worked at Destination: Home in Santa Clara County managing the region’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Panelist – Mark Warren
Associate, FAIA, Office of Charles F. Bloszies
Mark Warren is an architect and an associate at the Office of Charles F. Bloszies, FAIA, an architecture and structural engineering firm in San Francisco. Mark has worked on several navigation center facilities in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties as a designer and project manager, concurrently with the firm’s other projects in the office, retail, education, and multifamily residential sectors. Mark’s academic background includes teaching positions at the University of California, Berkeley, a Fulbright graduate research scholarship, and published articles and book chapters in the field of architectural history. Their interest in architecture stems from a commitment to making the built environment more just, equitable, and accessible. Mark holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Panelist – Rachel Alonso
Project Director, Assets and Infrastructure, City and County od San Francisco
Rachel Alonso currently works as a Project Director in the San Francisco Office of the City Administrator, where she is overseeing a project to improve citywide capital project delivery. She spent the first nine years of her career working for San Francisco Public Works in areas such as performance management, capital budgeting, and project management of the Navigation Center homeless shelters. She holds a B.A. in U.S. History and Urban Studies from UCLA and a master’s degree in City Planning from MIT.
Panelist – Robert Moltzen
Homeless Service Director, San Mato County Navigation Center
Robert Moltzen graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2014, with an emphasis on stereotypes, stigmas and prejudices. Robert started his journey in Homeless Services in 2018, joining LifeMoves as an Outreach Case Manager; providing intensive case management services to the unsheltered in East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Carlos and Belmont. In 2019, Robert was promoted to Associate Program Director of Maple Street Shelter, a 141 single adult congregate shelter in Redwood City. In 2022, Robert was promoted as Program Director of Maple Street Shelter and was then given the opportunity to transition his role to the Navigation Center. May 8th, 2023, was the day that Maple Street Shelter sunsetted and the San Mateo County Navigation Center was officially occupied.