San Diego organization fighting homelessness and addiction awarded $250K

Aaron Barrett is lucky to be alive.

“I overdosed seven times,” Barrett said. “Twice, I was flatlined. No heart rate, no breathing, no pulse. And they were able to bring me back.”

Barrett spent decades addicted to drugs and alcohol, and for the last seven years of his addiction, homeless on the streets of San Diego.

“There’s a lot of despair and hopelessness amongst the homeless community. Every little bit they have, it’s so easily taken away,” Barrett said. “There were times where, you know, I slept out in the cold. I’ve eaten out of trash cans. I’ve gone and picked up recycling just to get some money, you know, to do whatever — either get high or maybe get a little bite to eat, maybe not. And that’s how it is for most people. That’s how they live every single day. They wake up cold and hungry, and usually they go to sleep cold and hungry.”

When Barrett overdosed the last time in 2021, his wife found him on the riverbed and took him to the hospital.

“That’s when they told me I had a fever of 103, I had already gone septic and I had enough fentanyl in me to kill 30 people,” Barrett said, “and that if she wouldn’t have made it there within the hour or two that she did, there would have been nothing they could have done to save me.”

That was the moment Barrett said he began to turn his life around.

For years, he had been attending dinners hosted every Tuesday night by We See You San Diego, a nonprofit organization that invites anyone experiencing homelessness for a home-cooked meal each week.

“We host these dinner parties. We call them lavish dinner parties to show lavish love, to show people we believe they’re worthy of a better life,” said Laura Chez, We See You San Diego’s executive director.

Chez, her husband and another couple began serving meals in 2017.

They began with just a handful of guests, but seven years later, they serve more than 100 people each week, providing dinner, clothing, hygiene products and more.

It also comes with an invitation for those battling addiction: We See You San Diego will pay for detox and residential recovery for anyone who wants it.

“We walk alongside people all the way through to sober living and help them plan next steps so that they can reintegrate and live healthy, wonderful, beautiful lives with limitless potential,” Chez said.

Barrett accepted the invitation three years ago. He’s still at every Tuesday dinner – but now, serving guests, some he remembers from his days living at the riverbed.

“For a long time, I was lost. I didn’t have a purpose. You know, I was just trying to fill this hole inside that couldn’t be filled, this emptiness,” Barrett said. “And I found my purpose. My purpose is to help others pull them out from where I was.”

Chez said they’ve walked 107 people through recovery since January 2023.

“We see this over and over, that there are plans and purposes that people have not yet stepped into, but they needed an assist, and they also don’t want to do it alone,” she said. “There’s so much fear, and so we’re there to help mitigate that fear. We tell them, ‘We’re never going to leave you.’”

We See You San Diego’s work caught the attention of the Lucky Duck Foundation, a privately funded group that looks for immediate solutions to the homelessness crisis.

“Not one kid ever raised their hand and said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be homeless. I want to live on the streets,’” said Lucky Duck CEO Drew Moser.

“There’s far too many people suffering on the streets,” Moser continued. “Sometimes government can get tunnel vision on ‘We need more housing,’ and I think a lot of people can agree housing is an ideal outcome, but if all we do is focus on housing, we say that’s kind of like telling passengers on a sinking ship, ‘Hang on, we’ll build you some lifeboats sometime in the next five to 10 years,’ because that’s how long it takes to add housing, unfortunately, and it’s really challenging to scale economically. We’re focused on the here and the now.”

In September, the Lucky Duck Foundation – long backed by late Padres owner Peter Seidler and basketball legend Bill Walton – awarded We See You San Diego its annual “Fr. Joe Hustler of the Year Award” in honor of Fr. Joe Carroll.

That award comes with $250,000 to help We See You San Diego expand. It’s part of Lucky Duck’s newly unveiled $3 million commitment to several initiatives aimed at combatting homelessness.

But the award comes with a challenge: it’s contingent on a match from local governments, like San Diego County or any of its 18 cities.

“We’re encouraging government to do its part to help expand a program that’s proven, that’s tangible, that’s immediate, that has a lot of value and that’s saved a lot of lives,” Moser said. “The bang for the buck is significant, especially compared to some of the existing strategies that they’re employing.”

On Sept. 26, Lucky Duck sent a letter to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors outlining the ask and noting that there are only 78 detox beds in the entire county that accept Medi-Cal. The county board said it received the letter and was in the process of reviewing the request.

Chez said the funding could make a world of difference.

“The only thing I see is faces. I see the faces whose lives could be transformed with that money,” Chez said. 

Her message to local government is simple. 

“Let’s save lives together,” Chez said. “It would be an honor.”