Share the spirit: Transitional assistance helps veteran.
East Bay man finds aid, dignity with Berkeley Food and Housing Project
Christopher Underwood served his country for more than two decades. From 1990 to 2012, he handled deployments at U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard sites in California, as well as in Germany and the Middle East after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He rose through the ranks with an interest in politics honed by a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Mary’s College.
But those years took a quiet toll, not just on his body but his spirit, and led to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Although he sought help through VA programs, his PTSD affected his relationships, commitments and social and family obligations. His downward spiral and isolation eventually destroyed his marriage.
“I was feeling the onset of PTSD, but I wasn’t really knowing what was going on. Everything was turbulent upstairs,” Underwood said. “I started down a dark path, not with drugs or alcohol, but isolation. Between 2012 and 2014, I was just trying to find myself.”
Underwood said he can see those years differently now, after getting help from the Berkeley Food and Housing Project. The organization offered him temporary housing and skills training through its Veterans Transitional Housing program.
With funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs, project staff can provide veterans with support to find and keep housing, including the modest condominium where Underwood is now living in Oakland’s Kennedy Tract neighborhood near 29th Avenue and the Park Street Bridge. Some veterans stay with the program from between six to 24 months, some less.
“I needed help with permanent housing for my son and I,” Underwood said. “They were really on it. My case manager went through the program and its expectations. Going through orientation and enrollment, I found them to be caring and attentive.”
Berkeley Food and Housing Project has received funding this year from Share the Spirit, an annual holiday campaign that serves disadvantaged residents in the East Bay. Project executive director Calleene Egan said funds were and will be used to provide a warm holiday meal for as many as 300 clients on Thanksgiving and Christmas in a socially- distanced space with hot apple cider packaged to go: “We’ll try to make it a warm, holiday- spirited event, something really special for people.”
Egan, who joined as director of programs last year, said agencies like hers have had to respond to unprece
dented levels of community need, drawing on reserves of talent, ingenuity and grit.
Before the pandemic the project’s doors on Adeline Street in South Berkeley had been open overnight from 4 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. to provide an overnight shelter and meals for community members experiencing food insecurity.
In coordination with the VA, Egan said they’ve had to move some veterans into shelters at area hotels, including two through a partnership program with Alameda County using state funds.
“I can say that more people are experiencing homelessness this year,” Egan said. “We have served more men than women, we’ve served an increasing number of veterans and we have seen an increase in families, especially with opening the two hotels.”
Underwood stayed in the transitional- housing program at the project’s Dwight Way shelter for several months before moving to Oakland. He said he could see the care shown to the project’s homeless shelters for men on the first f loor and women on the third floor.
“They showed (compassion for) people at their most desolate moments,” Underwood said. “It was very encouraging how they ran the program. It’s all about providing care and helping people transition to more stable places as they go through their trials and tribulations.”
Underwood can now help care for his son Kingston, 9, who lives with autism and attends a San Pablo private school. He has also re- connected with daughters from earlier relationships: Domenisha, 27, a newly minted emergency-room physician, and Aiyanna, 19, a secondyear pre-med college student who hopes to become a pediatrician.
“They are definitely my inspiration,” Underwood said. “I was always attendant to them, caring and loving. Even though I was afar, they were always my inspiration to help me get through dark times.”
These days, he is working at completing a 10-month online program to become a certified mental health rehabilitation technician so he can pass along lessons from his experiences. He also co-parents with his ex-wife, getting Kingston to classes and training to help him live independently later in life. Underwood is even doing more in the kitchen, to help his son.
“I’m putting more effort in learning to cook,” Underwood said, “and expanding his horizons to get him in there to participate in the process.”