My Greg Gopman Story
I’m Eileen Richardson, the CEO of the Downtown Streets Team, a peer based workforce empowerment program that helps the homeless get jobs and housing in 8 cities around the Bay. I’m also the former CEO of Napster and Infravio, and a former VC. I’ve known Greg for 2 years, this is my Greg story.
What must one do to redeem themselves? If you want to really know Greg, then read this. He has worked tirelessly for years trying to figure out how to help our homeless community members have a safe place to sleep at night. He flew around the country to visit programs that might be working for other communities so he could bring them here, he spent countless time with us at Downtown Streets Team (DST) volunteering and even came from SF to Palo Alto to help our community prepare our Thanksgiving Meal for 500 homeless men and women. He created “I heart SF” bracelets and gave them to homeless men and women for free so that they might be able to sell them to make money, all of this at his own cost. He met with countless agencies and officials from many cities, and his work culminated in an incredible Town Hall focusing on homeless solutions that was well attended got plenty of people discussing the issue again. He also created a plan to build transitional housing as a safe place for people while they get back on their feet.
All of us make mistakes, but I have never met anyone in my life that has worked as hard to figure out how to make amends for his mistake and then take it so far as to actually try to find a solution to this intractable problem we face in this city. And the ironies of all ironies is that Greg is largely responsible for paving the way for DST to launch our SF Team and after just six months, 22 people have full time jobs, 18 have part-time jobs and three people no longer live on the streets.
Greg was with us at Downtown Streets Team’s “Just Say Hi” kickoff celebrating the stars on our team that are working so hard to give back to their communities and to take advantage of their second chance at life at the exact time this regurgitation of old news was written. Being at this work for over a decade now, we know that volunteering and getting a second chance to prove yourself is why we have over 1100 success stories of men and women moving into their own housing or finding employment and becoming taxpayers again all over the Bay Area. The ONLY way to end homelessness is to be forgiving with NO judgement and treat someone based on what they are willing to do today to change their lives — GREG GOPMAN should be proud of the work he has done and I can’t think of anyone that deserves a second chance more than he.
