Downtown Streets Team is ending services. Not just in Modesto, but everywhere
On Friday, the city announced that Downtown Streets Team Modesto will shut down at the end of October. On Saturday, the entire organization announced it would shutter at the same time due to “significant challenges” politically and financially.
Downtown Streets Team was founded 20 years ago and serves 16 communities in the San Francisco Bay area and Northern California — including Modesto. The nonprofit has a longstanding relationship with the City of Modesto, which has allocated millions of dollars to it since 2019.
The nonprofit primarily helps those who are unhoused transition into housing and to secure jobs. One of its flagship programs offers members the opportunity to clean parts of the city in exchange for a stipend to pay for basic needs. Since 2019 it’s served nearly 400 individuals, supported 182 with housing opportunities and helped 127 secure employment, according to the city.
CEO of Downtown Streets Team Julie Gardner told The Bee that Modesto was “one of our biggest and most thriving sites,” adding that city officials and supporters came up with creative and innovative methods to keep the program going. But, ultimately it wasn’t enough to save the organization as a whole.
“I wish I had a satisfying kind of single reason for the cause of this, but really it is a plethora of reasons that kind of go back to the current political and financial climate that we’re facing as a homelessness organization right now,” Gardner said. .
Gardner cited external pressures among the reasons that Downtown Streets Team was closing, saying “The funding landscape for nonprofits and community-based organizations at large has shifted in an extreme way, and we are feeling the impacts of that.”
As for internal pressures, Gardner declined to comment. But she did apologize and added that it was “absolutely heartbreaking across the board” and that shuttering was “never something that we wanted nor had anticipated at this level.”
“I want to reinforce to our partners, to the (Modesto) City Council, to the (Modesto Police Department), they have done everything to support us,” said Gardner. “They have been tremendously supportive and truly our work in Modesto is a perfect model of the successes that can be achieved when you have a local community and government partner with a community based organization to drive change.”
Downtown Streets Team Modesto has been repeatedly lauded and praised by elected officials, law enforcement and community members alike.
City Councilmember Nick Bavaro, a staunch advocate of the program, said he was informed of its closure around the same time the city sent out a press release on Friday afternoon. Bavaro said that he was “pissed off” and felt “blindsided.”
“I’m incredibly disappointed,” he said. “It’s such an important program for our community and I was just hoping there was a way we could save it.”
Bavaro said he was planning to talk to City Councilmembers Chris Ricci and Eric Alvarez about taking next steps — which would include what to do with all the funding the city allocated for the program.
Ricci was in agreement.
“(We) need to get together and try to hammer out a way to … create something that maintains its value and its purpose for the community,” Ricci said.
This story was originally published August 30, 2025 at 4:32 PM.
