Dorothy Day House - Berkeley, California

SoyWatt V.

Had some good meals here the vegetarian spaghetti is good. And got a new Mountain Hardware jacket from the donations closet along with a lightweight cheese wiz orange bicycle jacket when I needed it when I was homeless.

Ara is the case manager and is super understanding. There is laundry for those who really need to use the machines and a sign up process for personal lockers.

The Veterans Museum on the other side of the building is I hope going to be available year round even in the summer because it's not safe to sleep on the street.

Gayla M.

Great size, nice stage and perfect for lectures, book signing events, etc!

daula R.

Great places. It does a lot for the homeless community.

Allen N.

Warning: when getting free food, always attempt to get vegetarian. Free meat is provided AS IS, without any warranty, neither express nor implied, not for any purpose, neither for fitness for merchantability nor for freedom from defects of workmanship.

To begin, it's overrun with homeless people who explode angrily, the building is condemned, we're an honor-shame culture, and the food is boring and mediocre and despite being mushy, it's hard to chew and digest. On all the preceding, it's a classic example of an enterprise in the post 2001 USA.

Words define status, and Carlos' status is seriously that he is a ----, and he deserves an equally and simultaneously serious and irreverent assessment. Unless you're asking because you need to have something that even for here is particularly abusive or ----ty to happen, don't ask for Carlos. I know I could suffer real life consequences for this, but that can't deter me because ---- Carlos, he is a wimpy ---ed little piece of miles gloriosus ---- and because FML. The fellow clients also vary, some are just trying to repair their lives since COVID and the recession. Others are here because they are ----s; for example, some of the clients have attitudes like "I'm sorry I hit [a fellow client on a previous occasion]... I know [that violence isn't the answer]. It's fun though," which certainly is not my attitude. One of them once had an improvised battleaxe, and put it down to challenge onlookers to a duel that would have been by fist-fighting if it had happened.

There is the matter of Carlos and fellow clients. He once ate with a fellow client I've always had trouble getting along with, which is just another complaint I have about Carlos. Since then that client has disappeared from the region, so fortunately I no longer have contact with the fellow client. I still have contact with Carlos, though.

Carlos was using the phone outside with the gate open. It wasn't supposed to be open and he wasn't supposed to be there then, he was supposed to be inside working. I ignored his warning to not shut the gate and I shut it. He then told me "Catch me on the street, [word only black people are supposed to use]," and he told an onlooker to "Call the police." As it happens, neither of us is black, and to my knowledge even with the one-drop rule neither of us is black. If either or both of us were black, that wouldn't stop him from using that word. None of that can deter me, since ---- Carlos and ---- decadent and declining / collapsed empire anyway, the only solution to these problems that I know of right now is firing Carlos, leaving California and time passing. I've tried complaining about Carlos and so far all my complaints have had no result.

Don't expect great results with the TV programming. The best I've ever seen on that glowing rectangle is Dope: "This Isn't Miami Vice" and the scene in Red Notice where the characters were fighting each other with a Soviet missile and a stolen Mil helicopter. It was pretty good for the USA's TV, and neither the reality nor the fantasy were set in the USA. Other than that the TV programming here is only worse. Unless there's a group activity that doesn't involve the TV, leave for the library at 10 AM exactly.

Just don't combine Ara and rodents.

If you're going to bribe someone to have something nice happen, try Ara ... she's not too good for it like Leonard nor too bad for it like Carlos. I think if there's a good employee there, it's Leonard, but oddly (and USA-ly since always having the good employee around when it's open is too good for the USA) the staff member there is usually Ara or Carlos. Be kind to the cats, dogs, and the mouse. Other than that, they are pretty good employees for a country in the Americas that isn't Brazil.

All told, this gets three stars, since like the USA itself, there are better places and worse places for me than this terrible and necessary place, and Chomsky's finding that "the USA is based on conformity and mediocrity" is a useful approximation for understanding DDH.

ilsa B.

The people are great The food is delicious Thank God for Dorothy Day house center I'd be lost without them all

A H.

REALLY? ROTTEN CHICKEN SNUCK INTO THE BEEF SPAGHETTI NOODLES? BOYCOTT DOROTHY DAY HOUSE!!!!!! IF I GET SICK AGAIN FROM YOUR FOOD TONIGHT IM PRESSING CHARGES. YOUR CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA RECENTLY MADE ME SO SICK I ALMOST DIED. YOU ARE EVIL.... GODLESS AND WORTHLESS PEOPLE. IF I GET SICK AGAIN YOU ARE GONNA PAY. TO DENY FOOD IS TO DENY GOD ... QUIT SERVING ROTTEN CHICKEN TO HOMELESS PEOPLE...OR GET SHUT DOWN. YOU ARE DOING THIS INTENTIONALLY. AND IT IS DISGUSTING.

Vanderwals F.

Awesome resource for the homeless in Berkeley CA in the basement of the old Veterans Building (WWI). Starting at 8-9 most days they offer free breakfast, showers, & a weekly sign up sheet for the 8 laundry slots each day (2 machines available at 8&9 & 2&3, i think). Offers general respite as a drop in center with various speakers & casual classes offered in the afternoon, ranging from art, knitting, personal improvement, some job/application training, volunteering opportunities (with compensation in gift cards relevant to the individual's needs), the occasional movie. Lunch offered also, usually, but limited housing support & no evident case management, religious bias nor ID required...For better or worse, natch!

Steven K. B.

For this business to claim it’s open 24 hours, but for the fraction of Berkeley’s homeless living there, is a gross misstatement, like I believe many by the administration of this homeless shelter who lives a block up the street in one of the newest and most expensive apartment complexes in Downtown Berkeley. For the rest of Berkeley’s colossal homeless population Berkeley’s Dorothy Day House (BDDH) is open for services only 4 hours a day.

Showers, once available from 8am-4pm by waiting your turn, are now a two day affair, and along with laundry, available only from 9-11am and 1-3pm by signing up at 8:30am the day before. Locker access, once available on the hour from 8:30am and throughout the day, is now only at 9:30, 11:30, 1:30, and 2:30, though employees work less and are paid more than before the reduction in services.

Homeless services need to be convenient and readily available for those they serve, instead of those they employ, not to make people come in early then wait over 24 hours to take a shower.

Clean clothes at BDDH are just that, you give them your size and they bring you whatever they have. But don't expect a nice pair of slacks for a job interview, even if they have them. Breakfast is a cup of oatmeal or grits, day old donut, hard boiled eggs, slice of bread, a few slices of canned fruit, and a cup or two of coffee, EVERY DAY. While lunches are usually pretty good, but getting ever smaller with the opening of the "New Horizons" shelter in West Berkeley, which feeds an extra 50 mouths from the same kitchen. But most troubling is how I believe BDDH blatantly steals anything they can from their clients.

You see, I became homeless in Berkeley as a fifty-three year old UC Berkeley student for exposing the actions of corrupt police officers, who in turn destroyed my housing situation, stellar references, a job, and nearly cost me my life. I graduated and had the need of, just after Berkeley Dorothy Day House (BDDH) took over the downtown shelter.

One of my last professors at Cal is a co-alumni of the legal studies program and an extremely well regarded judge in Alameda County who I had informed of my past and my bouts with homelessness.This judge had also worked with the Obama/Biden administration affecting policy regarding children and having come up in Alameda County Courts within a few years of each other, extremely well regarded by Vice President Kamala Harris.

After the election, the aforementioned judge referred me to V.P. Harris for her staff, but I having no address, sent her two messengers to the shelter. It was, however, in the depths of the pandemic so aside from checking my locker every few weeks and the occasional meal, was staying away. So, when the message came across the Executive Administrator of BDDH Robbi’s desk, instead of putting it in my locker so I could respond, neglected to inform me so she could steal it for herself, in addition to at least two other jobs she already has.

Just imagine, a homeless administrator, as soon as an opportunity comes through from the Vice President of the United States on reference from a local judge for a man in that administrator’s charge, a disabled man with learning disabilities and a crazy eye who worked his butt off to get into and graduate from the top public university in the world even while being homeless for standing up against authority in protection of others, that administrator neglects to tell that client, and just steals the opportunity for herself.

The late Dorothy Day was arrested 12x and imprisoned 4x for standing up against authority, and I don't wonder what she would have done.

So I believe the administration of BDDH treats homeless as livestock, stealing anything good that comes their way, to keep those they’re supposed to serve, homeless in perpetuity.

And continuing to victimize people for being homeless by stealing life changing opportunities from them, is no way for homeless administrators anywhere, to address the homeless crisis.

“Charity is only as warm as those who administer it.” 〜 Dorothy Day