HF Voices: Jeanne Penn, Volunteer

Jeanne Penn, front row, third from the right, at Hamilton Families’ Volunteer Appreciation Night. May 16, 2024.

“That’s what I friggin’ learned from this! They’re as trustworthy as my friends. I suppose I meet some people that aren’t. But [the notion of], ‘You handed your phone over to someone that used to be homeless, are you crazy Jeanne?’ It’s like, no, it didn’t feel crazy.”

As much as Hamilton Families is shaped by its employees, whether that be a case manager or communications director, so too is it formed by those outside of the organization’s payroll, namely volunteers. In this interview, I spoke with Jeanne Penn, a long-time volunteer for Hamilton Families, as well as several other organizations combatting issues of homelessness, poverty, and substance use in the city. I first encountered Jeanne at the Panhandle, where she was serving agua fresca to families at HF Transitional Housing’s end-of-summer event. Upon hearing about how she became involved in social work in the first place, I was deeply moved by the transformative power volunteer work seemed to have on her life. As such, on August 21, 2025, I hopped on a call with Jeanne to unpack more of her story.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your background. I’d love to know what your relationship is to the city itself, to family homelessness if there is any, and an introduction to your involvement with Hamilton.    

JP: I’ve been living in the city of San Francisco for 54 years. I moved here from Madison, Wisconsin after graduating college. I love this city. It’s gone through several transitions since I’ve lived here. Lot of my friends are not real happy with this city and they’ve moved away from it. I love it and I always will. I think it’s just a really vibrant, welcoming city.  

The reason I came to volunteer is I lost my husband a couple of years ago, which was devastating for me. And I wanted something really positive to come out of my loss. I wanted that loss to put me into action to do things for other people. 

I started volunteering with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and then friends of mine who were working with Hamilton Families in several different locations asked me if I’d like to help out, and I said, “Absolutely, would love to help out!” And then I started volunteering at the Martin de Porres soup kitchen. I just feel like I’ve got a lot to give, and I want to make my husband’s passing, like I say, something good to grow out of that. 

So, your husband was involved in various social work? 

JP: No, not at all. 

Just, out of his passing, you wanted to do something for the community. 

JP: That’s correct. 

You mentioned volunteering at other nonprofit organizations helping people who are experiencing homelessness. Hamilton’s focus is specifically on unhoused families. How does your experience with that demographic differ, if at all, from your experiences interacting with people who are unsheltered because of drug addiction, alcohol abuse, or mental illness? 

JP: Well, it differs simply in that the people I interact with at Hamilton are, if not anything else, temporarily housed. The people that I’m working with at the food bank are completely housed, clothing no issue. The people of Martin de Porres are completely unhoused. But what I have found remarkable is that those that are of less fortune than those other people that I interact with in other aspects of my life, their gratitude is unbelievable. I mean, they voice their gratitude for doing the work that us volunteers are doing. When I first started doing this, I really didn’t know homeless people, I really didn’t know unsheltered people. Much to my detriment, I just thought they were kind of dead, the mentally ill and the drug addicts, that they just had this dead life. And I have been awakened; I have been taught that that is absolutely not true. They’re human. So not only am I helping them, but they’re helping me, in teaching me and schooling me that we’re all in this thing together. I’m not a Buddhist, but if I were to align with a religion it would be Buddhism, simply because it’s “I am you and you are me and we’re all together.” And that’s how I’ve always felt about things, but I really didn’t practice it when it came to the homeless and the drug-addicted. Now, [volunteer work has] broadened my capacity to understand the philosophy I live by. 

You mentioned interacting with people outside the social work setting that you’re in now. What kind of work were you involved in? 

JP: I am retired from my life’s work. I was a practice manager for an orthopedic surgeon and a cardiologist and a primary care physician. I did that for 40 years. So, I have a background in helping and facilitating people’s needs, but not to the extent that I’m doing now. 

That’s interesting, so how is the healthcare setting similar in some ways to the work you’re doing now? What are the nuances between how you interact with people seeking healthcare as opposed to those who are seeking housing? 

JP: In having done the practice manager work, I learned how to respond instead of react. ‘Cause you meet adversity, not so much in the Hamilton shelter, but in these other homeless settings, people who are up in your face. And my work in healthcare helped me be able to step back, take a big breath, and go, “Ok, let’s find out what’s going on and not come back in their face. What are you trying to tell me? Let’s find out what this is.” So, working in healthcare has been very, very helpful in what I’m doing now. Again, [in that setting], people not homeless, people not needing food, people who could afford insurance, people who were working, I assume there were people who came in who had mental health issues but not to the degree that they couldn’t function. But, if anything, it taught me how to respond instead of react. 

I saw you at Hamilton's end-of-summer event recently for children’s services. When you’re in that setting, it’s children running around, parents there also, people having fun; I would imagine a little less confrontational. 

JP: A lot. 

A lot less confrontational. And you also mentioned the humanizing aspect that doing volunteer work does in allowing you to see that a lot of people who receive the label “homeless” are actually not the way people disconnected from that world would envision them to be. I’m interested in the children aspect. When you see children, often of elementary school age, who are experiencing homeless, perhaps not fully aware of the situation but still aware nonetheless, how do those interactions factor into your understanding of what it means for a family to be homeless in the city? 

JP: There again, I’m surprised. I was helping out at 260 Golden Gate Ave down in the Tenderloin where I first initiated my contact with Hamilton. And I was surprised at how well the kids were coping. They were being kids! They just wanted to have fun, and “Let’s put on that funny hat!” and “Let’s play with the [pool] noodles!” and “Let’s paint our faces!” Not just the children, but the families seemed to be, from all outward appearances, coping very well. Kid energy is just fantastic to be around. They don’t have agendas and they’re just “Oh, look at this over here, let’s go jump on that!” They’re just in the moment, which is a fabulous kind of energy. They’re just in the moment. 

What do you think stops a lot of people from involving themselves in volunteer work? 

JP: [LONG PAUSE] From my standpoint, I never thought about volunteering until David died. And it wasn’t that previously it was like, “Oh no, I don't want to do that, absolutely not!” It just was an awakening for me. And, of course, with the unsheltered and drug and alcohol addiction and mental health[...] there’s so much bad publicity around it, so much negative stereotyping around it, that people just[...] I just was always looking the other way. I had this really busy work life. I can’t speak for other people, but my husband’s dying was an awakening for me. 

Do you have any specific anecdotes or an encounter you had either with a family or with somebody else, maybe somebody working at an organization, that was sort of an “aha moment” for you? 

JP: I mean, again, the gratitude that is shown and the manners. I find they have better manners than people who make $150,000 dollars a year. I work in a situation where I rub up against people who make a lot of money, and I’ve got a really menial little desk job, and I’m treated fairly poorly by some of those people. And I cannot say I’ve ever been treated poorly by the unsheltered. There’s anger and upset-ness, but I’ve never been treated as if I’m beneath them. And so, there's this [reflective] glimpse: “Oh my god, you’re housed, you have food, you have means that you don’t have to worry about money, and you’re treated as if you’re something less.” I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who is unsheltered or drug-addicted or alcohol-addicted.  

I’ve had so many incredible encounters. I had met this woman and her child at the Hamilton shelter. They were there very temporarily, but over three or four months, I came to really know her and her child. Her child was developmentally challenged, and I got into the elevator with them one time, and I just started talking to the child. And the child was so [friendly]. I spoke to her as if she was a human being. And her mother pulled me aside afterward and said, “I can’t tell you what that meant to me, to have you treat my child as you would treat any other child.” And then [after she and her child had exited the shelter], I ran into her. I was at the food bank, it was an outdoor pantry, and one day this car pulls up, and she goes, “Jeanne! Jeanne!” And it’s [the woman] trying to figure out how to get to the freeway, and it was like Old Home Week! You normally can’t form real, deep relationships with people because they move on so quickly, but I formed a fairly deep relationship with this woman and her child. 

It’s so interesting that you talk about the temporariness of the interactions you have. I can only imagine how strange that is; to later encounter families on the street in a random chance occurrence and they’re no longer in the same situation you found them in. On that success end, what does it mean to you that somebody has escaped the cycle of poverty or escaped the cycle of homelessness? 

JP: It’s the world to me. You know, I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I did all the right things when I was working. My mother’s code when I was young: “You get a paycheck, I don’t care if it’s 50 cents, you put something in your savings account.” And that’s what I’ve always done. I have worked for several employers who had profit sharing, and they set me up. So I’m financially okay. What I continue to tell myself is, I’ve got so much. I’ve got a plethora of friends, I mean deep friendships that go back 30, 40, 50 years. I have family that is very close knit. I’ve got so much, and it is so wonderful to see people who have almost nothing finally start gaining so much. They get to be housed, they get to have regular food.  

What’s distressing for me at this point is all this federal non-funding going on. It worries me what is to become of all the great work that Hamilton has done. What becomes of people who need housing but can’t find it now because there’s no financial support system? 

[Going back to the woman at the Hamilton shelter], it was so wonderful to see her with this big smile, and we dropped into a conversation for 10 or 15 minutes while she sat in the car. She said, “I don’t know how to get to the freeway” and I said, “Well, I don’t know how to tell you the freeway” and she said, “Can I use your phone?” and I said “Sure, use my phone!” And somebody asked me later, “Weren’t you afraid she was going to steal it?” And it’s like, “No!” That’s what I friggin’ learned from this! They’re as trustworthy as my friends. I suppose I meet some people that aren’t. But [the notion of], “You handed your phone over to someone that used to be homeless, are you crazy Jeanne?” It’s like, no, it didn’t feel crazy. 

That’s one of the most common stereotypes placed against people experiencing homelessness, this idea that federal funds that go to these families are bound to be misused or mishandled. But as you’re saying, the attitude of the community and of the local government should be, “We’re going to trust these people have a plan, that they know where they want to end up, they just need an extra bit of resources to get there.” Since we’re talking about the larger system of support that ideally exists for people experiencing homelessness, in what part of that system is the volunteer most vital in? 

JP: [As a volunteer], I think I’m best utilized with the face-to-face. I only know the “bottom rung,” if you want to call it that. But if I didn’t think it was valuable, I would quit doing it. [Instead] what has happened is, I’ve found myself volunteering more and more and more. ‘Cause I find it extremely valuable, not only for the people that I'm helping and volunteering for, but it helps me be a better person, helps me live the philosophy that I’ve always wanted to live.  

What would you say to someone who’s on the fence about volunteering? Maybe they have the same sort of preoccupations you had initially. What would you say to those people? 

JP: I would say that my experience is that there’s no need to be afraid. If you don’t find that it suits you, you can always step away from it, you can always step back. But you can’t hit the ball if you don’t swing the bat, so go in there and swing the bat. And if you strikeout, so be it, but you could also hit a homerun. My experience is that there’s no reason to be afraid to try. Give it a try. You might find that you find more of yourself.

Ryan Yim is a Communications & Development Intern at Hamilton Families, a nonprofit service provider to families experiencing homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area. To help end family homelessness, visit hamiltonfamilies.org today.