Monument Crisis Center

 

Monument Crisis Center of Concord serves the communities of Contra Costa County with a variety of services, including food distribution, education and–most recently–free tax preparation services for the first time since 2014.

And, as a new grantee in Golden State Opportunity’s Community Connect program for the 2025 tax season, Monument Crisis Center looks forward to even more opportunities to serve their community.

“Our priority is to continue these services and keep this tax program going this time around and being part of the Community Connect program will allow us to do that,” said Martinez-Lopez. “We also want to expand out further into Contra Costa County and serve even more people.”

Monument Crisis Center had previously been a VITA site offering free tax preparation services in 2014 before transitioning away from offering services when then program coordinator Armando Martinez-Lopez–who joined Monument Crisis Center as a student-intern–left the organization. Martinez-Lopez returned to work at Monument Crisis Center as its Finance Director in 2023 and a volunteer reached out and encouraged him to restart the free tax preparation program.

“There were other agencies around us who were doing VITA, but they were far away from Concord,” Martinez-Lopez said. “It’s one more burden that our community faces, having to figure out how to get to another town entirely. We’ve also seen less agencies offering free tax prep and we’ve seen clients get taken advantage of, being charged $200 or $300 to complete their tax returns from private tax preparers. We felt it was a service we had to bring back.”

During their inaugural tax return season, Monument Crisis Center saw success, serving almost 140 clients from seven different counties and 12 different cities. For 2025, they hope to serve more clients through direct outreach in these communities, including plans to take a fully integrated bus equipped with everything needed for tax filings to outlying communities to help clients file their taxes.

Martinez-Lopez also said Monument Crisis Center is looking at becoming an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) renewal and application site to even further serve the community in filing their taxes and claiming their credits.

For Martinez-Lopez, offering these services to his community is more than just a duty.

“I have personal experience with this since I grew up with my family going to food banks as well,” he said. “So a lot of this work doesn’t feel like helping clients. It feels like helping family out and our center has a family vibe I love.”

 

Learn more about Monument Crisis Center