Share the Spirit: Veterans Accession House helps homeless veterans find stability, community in Pittsburg
Nonprofit provides transitional housing to military veterans
OAKLEY, CA – NOV. 20: Kendrick Harrelson, of Sacramento, is photographed with his daughter Brianna Harrelson-Enriquez, 9, in Oakley, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021. Harrelson is a Navy veteran who graduated from the Veterans Accession House in Pittsburg. Veterans Accession House is nonprofit the operates out of a duplex in Pittsburg where veterans can come in from the streets, get jobs and find stability while looking for a place of their own. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group).
For nearly two months, Kendrick Harrelson never left the fire restoration company where he worked. Literally.
At night, he went into a back storage room, inflated an old air mattress and tried falling asleep while a small pinprick hole left his bed slowly sinking to the floor.
“Being homeless as a veteran, it’s a rough ordeal,” Harrelson said. “It was depressing. I really could have let myself go.”
These days, the sleep comes easily.
A college student at 49 and living in a house with his girlfriend, Harrelson ranks among a small-but-growing number of military veterans to graduate from the Veterans Accession House. The nonprofit operates a duplex in Pittsburg where veterans can come in from the streets, get jobs and find stability while looking for a place of their own.
For Harrelson, the organization helped him climb out of homelessness and, more recently, win the right to once again visit his 9-year-old daughter.
“I was given a second chance, and I’m very blessed and grateful for that,” Harrelson said…
