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BERKELEY — Alex Thorson can often be found at homeless encampments under overpasses, in abandoned buildings and public parks in the East Bay.
He doesn’t live in such an encampment – at least not anymore. Instead, the 43-year-old military veteran now visits these places as part of his work on the outreach team at the Berkeley Food and Housing Project.
“I’ve lived the life,” says Thorson, adding that some of the clients he now works with are the same people he once lived beside when he himself was homeless. “I still see people who I slept with under the same blankets.”
This kind of outreach is a crucial part of the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, an organization that has been helping people in need since 1970. The agency provides a number of important services, including transitional housing and free meals, but the first step is to reach the right audience.
“It would be ridiculous to expect people in need to find out where this front door is and march in and say, ‘Hi, how can you help us?’” says James Huntley, Berkeley Food and Housing Project’s director of advancement. “We must go and find people where they are.”
And that’s what Thorson and other members of the Outreach Team are doing, visiting homeless encampments four days a week in Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville.
The Berkeley Food and Housing Program has received funding this year from Share the Spirit, an annual holiday campaign that serves needy residents in the East Bay. Donations support programs of more than 50 nonprofit agencies in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
“This agency started in 1970, under a different name,” Huntley says. “It started in the wake of the Vietnam War, when homelessness first started to become visible. It was founded by seven leaders of seven churches. It started as a soup kitchen, essentially.”
It’s grown in scale and scope greatly over the years, morphing into a homeless services agency that now has a $10 million annual budget.
“Our budget just tripled in the last five years – so a tremendous amount of growth,” Huntley says. “But that commitment to food and hunger has stayed in the mission of the organization, because it is frequently a first point of contact.”
Thorson first came in contact with the Berkeley Food and Housing Project not long after moving to the Bay Area in 1998 as a “22-year-old homeless veteran” with just “the clothes on my back.” The agency provided him with the resources to help him get his life back on track, but then he experienced severe depression in 2010 and became homeless again. He ended up in Nashville for a spell, before returning to the Bay Area in 2013 and again contacting the Berkeley Food and Housing Project.
“I called the shelter and a nice lady answered,” Thorson remembers. “I asked if they had any shelter and she said yes. And then she asked me a few questions, one of them being if I was a military veteran? I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ She said, ‘That is awesome. Because we have a veterans transitional housing program. Is that something you’d be interested in?’”
He most definitely was, so he signed up for the program that would give him the foundation to begin rebuilding his life. And soon he was looking to help others do the same.
He met Marianne Sempari, the agency’s interfaith chaplain, who’d become a mentor to Thorson, and he later began volunteering on the outreach team. His own experience of living on the streets proved invaluable to connecting with folks at the encampments and having them listen as he detailed the services offered by the Berkeley Food and Housing Project.
“I know what it’s like (to be homeless) and how much it sucks,” he says. “I am proof positive – if you work with the system, the system will work with you.”
Thorson is now fully self-supporting, living in his own place, and employed full time on the agency’s outreach team. And his co-workers rave about the job he’s doing.
“His ultimate goal is to help others, because he’s been helped,” says Robbi Montoya, supervisor on the outreach team. “He’s the first one to volunteer – I mean, any job.
“We are really lucky to have him. And we’re lucky that he loves us so much that he is going to stick around. Nobody is going to be able to poach Alex, because Alex loves the Berkeley Food and Housing Project.”
For more information about the agency, visit bfhp.org.
SHARE THE SPIRIT
The Share the Spirit holiday campaign, sponsored by the Bay Area News Group, serves needy residents of Alameda and Contra Costa counties by funding nonprofit holiday and outreach programs.
To make a tax-deductible contribution, clip the coupon accompanying this story or go to www.sharethespiriteastbay.org/donate. Readers with questions, and individuals or businesses interested in making large contributions, may contact the Share the Spirit program at 925-472-5760 or sharethespirit@crisis-center.org.
