Click here if you’re unable to view the gallery on your mobile device.

OAKLAND — The $9 million homelessness prevention program Oakland launched last year has succeeded in keeping nearly 500 families off the streets so far, a city spokeswoman said Tuesday.

From July through December, the new Keep Oakland Housed initiative provided legal and financial help to 473 households at risk of eviction, allowing them to keep their homes, get an extension before moving out or secure money for relocation, according to a city news release. Mayor Libby Schaaf formally launched the program in October in answer to the homelessness crisis gripping the city as home and rental prices skyrocket. The idea was to give families a leg up before they became homeless — while the city was spending money on rapid re-housing and other services for the already-homeless, little had been done to prevent the problem.

So far, it’s working as intended, said Karen Erickson, director of housing services for Catholic Charities of the East Bay, one of three local organizations facilitating the program.

“All the agencies are on track to exceed our goals,” she said.

Catholic Charities has helped 64 households since July, putting the organization slightly ahead of its goal — serving 120 families in the first year.

Of those families, about three-quarters needed help paying late rent. The rest needed a hand with a security deposit on a new apartment. And in providing those services, Catholic Charities, which received $3 million under Keep Oakland Housed, has kept those families from joining the thousands of homeless Oaklanders living in tents, cars or RVs throughout the city.

“I’m sure it’s making a dent,” Erickson said. “I think it may be too soon to exactly say how big of a dent it’s making. For every individual family or household we worked with, we changed their life, and they can tell us that. So in that sense, we’re making a huge dent.”

The Keep Oakland Housed coordinators intend to measure just how big a dent — they have partnered with Social Policy Research Associates to conduct a formal evaluation of the program’s success.

The number of homeless people living in Oakland has grown by more than a quarter in two years — jumping from 2,191 in 2015 to 2,761 in January 2017, according to the Everyone Counts homeless census, which experts say likely undercounts the population.

Thanks to Keep Oakland Housed, 61-year-old Oakland resident Debra Ross will not become one of them. Ross, who is raising her 15-year-old grandson, received an eviction notice for unpaid rent, and was going to be forced out of her home in October.

“I woulda been homeless, out the door, on the streets,” she said.

Instead, Keep Oakland Housed helped her pay about $700 in back rent, and Ross got to keep her apartment.

“I’m forever grateful for them,” she said.

Bay Area Community Services and the East Bay Community Law Center represent the other two legs of the program, and each also received $3 million, for a total of $9 million. The money came from the San Francisco Foundation through an anonymous donor ($3 million), and Kaiser Permanente ($6 million).

As part of the festivities celebrating Schaaf’s inauguration to a second term this week, the city is hosting a dance party at the Fox Theater on Friday with proceeds from ticket sales benefitting Keep Oakland Housed.

Still, it’s clear the resources Keep Oakland Housed has brought to the table aren’t going to be enough to single-handedly solve the crisis. Catholic Charities of the East Bay still gets phone calls from more people than it can help, including from people outside Oakland, and therefore outside the Keep Oakland Housed coverage area, Erickson said.

“There’s a huge need,” she said. “We’re still not meeting the need that is in the area.”

How to get help

Visit KeepOaklandHoused.org, call 211 or visit the offices of Bay Area Community Services, Catholic Charities of the East Bay or East Bay Community Law Center.

Oakland residents are eligible for help if they make up to $40,700 for a one-person household or $58,100 for a family of four. That’s 50 percent or less of Alameda County’s median income.