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Margaret, a 52-year-old Bay Area native and a current resident of the North County Women’s Shelter in Berkeley, says she’s “new to being homeless.”

After divorcing an abusive husband, she has spent the past two years without a permanent home, sleeping at motels, on friends’ couches, in her car, on benches, and now, at the women’s shelter. But it’s a situation she would like to think of as temporary.

Margaret counts herself lucky. The shelter, part of the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, has enough beds to accommodate 32 women, but has more than a hundred on its waiting list. She can stay there for one month while she works with a consultant to secure more permanent housing.

“I’m grateful to have this little bit of heaven,” she said.

Though she has previously stayed in another homeless shelter in San Leandro while employed as a U.S. census worker, Margaret said the Berkeley location was the first to show her individual attention, “mutual respect, and mutual vulnerability.”

They’ve also coordinated visits with a doctor to help her monitor her high blood pressure. In fact, Margaret says she’s noticed a dramatic improvement in her health, though she credits it to the three meals a day — including fresh fruit and vegetables — that the shelter provides.

Homeward Bound

The Berkeley Food and Housing Project is the largest homeless care provider in the East Bay, and includes the women’s shelter, a men’s shelter, a low-income housing residence on Russell Street and a daily meals program operating out of Trinity Church on Bancroft Way. Though one of its aims is to address its clients’ immediate needs for food and shelter, the main goal is to find them permanent homes, said the project’s associate director, Geoffrey Green.

“Everyone who walks in this door, we’re going to ask them, ‘How can we help you get off the streets and into a house?’” he said.

Over the past three years, the project has helped more than 500 individuals like Margaret transition to permanent housing, including the 21 who live at the Russell Street residence — more than any other program in the county. Of course, it still has a long way to go.

“We’re pretty pleased with ourselves, but it’s a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of thing,” Green said.

The city has supported Berkeley Food and Housing’s mission both financially and philosophically almost since its inception, according to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. For 2009-10, the city selected the program to distribute an $850,000 federal grant for rapid re-housing.

Thanks to the grant, when Margaret secures housing, the project will cover her first security deposit and one month’s rent. A consultant will also help her search for employment and create a monthly budget so she can live stably without having to return to the shelter — or worse, the streets.

“I don’t want to let them down. I don’t,” she said.

Unlikely Origins

The program got its start serving a very different population — in true Berkeley fashion.

During the first “Summer of Love” in 1969, the First Baptist Church of Berkeley started offering up impromptu meals out of its basement to traveling youths drawn to the Telegraph Avenue scene and the growing Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. The program was solidified when the University Lutheran Chapel joined the effort the following year.

Dale Edmunson, a nearby pastor in Pleasant Hill who later came to the First Baptist Church, said the first meals program was an immediate reaction to the wave of hungry new Berkeley dwellers.

“Neither was thinking of this as the beginning of anything permanent,” he said. “It was just responding to a need.”

Dr. Edmunson led the church from 1979 to 1990. By 1979, the clientele had changed into largely what it is now — older, often chronically homeless, many with a history of mental illness. The program began serving its signature ”Quarter Meal,” charging 25 cents for a hot meal to those who could afford it.

In 1990, Dr. Edmunson left to preach in Minneapolis. By the time he returned to the Bay and the Berkeley Food and Housing Project in 1999, the program had shifted its focus from meals to housing, and in 2002, it acquired the Russell Street residence.

“It had gone from a band-aid, addressing the symptoms of homelessness — namely seeing that people were fed — to addressing the basic issues which had caused this need,” Dr. Edmunson, now retired, said.

Changing Times

The program celebrates its 40^th anniversary this year (ABC7 News aired a shout-out last month). But with their success come new challenges.

Out of its $3 million annual budget, the project’s largest funding source is the city of Berkeley, which contributes about $800,000 according to Green. But their city funding was reduced by 3 per cent — part of an across-the-board cut – in the 2010 budget. … Continue reading »