Bronco Pushes For Change In San Diego

Santa Clara student aids in community cleanup and homelessness

Kevin Barber, a sophomore at Santa Clara, launched a charity program in 2018 called Wheels of Change. Wheels of Change was established to  help mitigate the issue of homelessness in San Diego. 

Every city that struggles with ending homelessness should take note of the powerful effects of one van patrolling the streets of San Diego and a small crew of previously homeless people supporting the current homeless population and getting them off the street. 

Wheels of Change, which Barber started at the age of 16, provides day jobs to the homeless community, offering stable work opportunities on a small clean-up crew that patrols San Diego by van and cleans up the city. 

The foundation not only gives its workers, about 20 people a day, a stipend of $52 for every shift of four hours they spend working, but also offers peer support and advice to those who might not find support from shelters. The operation and van is managed by Kenneth “K.B.” Allen who is a reformed gang member that leads the crew of the day, and provides guidance to the other members. 

The idea for Wheels of Change came from Barber’s mother, Dr. Carolyn Barber, who often shared her encounters with homeless patients in the emergency room. He was then inspired to help and researched a TED Talk where Richard Berry, the former mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico explained the success story of day work for homeless people in his community. Barber then took this idea out to his own community of San Diego

San Diego has always been inhospitable to homeless citizens. As with many cities across the country, there are issues of litter and human waste from communities of people that sleep on the streets. With resource scarcity and lack of support, these neglected members of society can even end up into police custody and even face police brutality as a consequence of the lack of care of police when faced with mental illness and drug abuse issues. 

It is important to note the cyclical nature of the involvement with the police in arresting these 

people for a night and releasing them the next day with the same lack of support. This perpetual cycle of homelessness stems from a number of factors, perhaps the primary one being a lack of support for the mental health issues that often contribute to many people finding themselves on the street. 

Barber, who needed guidance and financial support to start Wheels of Change, reached out to the Alpha Project, another non-profit organization dedicated to helping solve homelessness in San Diego. Bob McElroy, CEO of the Alpha Project, met Barber’s proposition with skepticism, but nonetheless supported Barber because of Barber’s persistence. From volunteering to showing up at McElroy’s office again and again, Barber proved that Wheels of Change was not just a senior year project to buff up the resume for upcoming college applications. 

McElroy then came to recognize the potential of Barber’s program upon its first day, seeing people who haven’t worked in years finally getting a chance to work. 

The formerly homeless turned employed workers in Wheels of Change actively reach out to those sleeping on the streets and provide them with guidance and support that guides them out of this cycle of homelessness. 

Because of Wheels of Change, businesses owners of San Diego have noticed a cleaner city and less people sleeping on the streets than before. Even one of the owners of the San Diego Padres, Peter Seidler, mentioned the areas around Petco Park have improved. 

Besides litter, the program also picks up drug paraphernalia, which also makes the community safer. 

The program also offers a chance to bridge the gap society has made between employed and the homeless. “[It] makes you feel like a citizen again,” said Louis Varga, a worker for Wheels of Change who was interviewed by CNN. 

The money that workers obtain from primarily donations is used on education, transportation and even new dress shoes for a job interview. 

Barber’s work with Wheels of Change demonstrates how misunderstandings of homeless people as being "lazy" or criminals can be addressed and fixed by these outreach programs that are peer oriented. The power of peer support and guidance in a community can also lessen the burden of the problems of homelessness that are placed on the police and criminal justice system. 
Many people experiencing homelessness have found support in the peer-to-peer outreach in Wheels of Change that they normally would never seek out in a regular homeless shelter. If more programs like Barber’s were supported in bigger cities around the country, the societal gap between successful workers and the unemployed homeless could be lessened, and as well more jobs could be created that in turn would make a cleaner and safer community.