BRONX TIMES REPORTER,BTR JANUARY 24-30, 2020 19
Victor Rivera overcame addiction, jail and homelessness and today runs the Bronx Parent
Housing Network and in January, started a soup kitchen. Schneps Media Jason Cohen
Formerly homeless Bronx gentleman
overcomes addiction to help others
BY JASON COHEN
He overcame homelessness, addiction
and incarceration and today, Victor
Rivera runs the Bronx Parent Housing
Network and recently launched a
soup kitchen.
In January, Rivera opened Manhattan’s
Loving Arms Soup Kitchen on
First Avenue between East 85th and
86th streets. He hopes to open one in
the Bronx soon.
Rivera, 59, who lives in Rockland,
was born and raised in the south
Bronx by his single mom Gloria, along
with his four siblings.
While today he is happy and
healthy, he endured many hardships
when younger.
“I grew up in times when there
were no good role models,” Rivera told
the Bronx Times.
At 138th and Brook Avenue, drug
dealers were everywhere. In fact, the
fi rst time he smoked marijuana was at
age 5.
He recalled how one night for dinner
things were so bad that they there
was one plate of rice and two eggs for
everyone.
At 7 he began bagging groceries
and using that money to support his
mom, who had chronic asthma.
“I didn’t want to be on welfare,” he
said.
But, a couple years later they
moved to Castle Hill and his life took a
turn for the worse. It was there that he
joined the drug scene.
At 10-years-old he started selling
weed and cocaine and eventually
dropped out of school at 14.
A year later he had his own apartment
and by 17, two children.
“That began the life of drug dealing,”
he explained. “Those days it
(drug dealing) was normal, that’s what
you knew.”
In 1979 he met crack cocaine. He
sold it, but soon began using.
“It became the love and ending of
my life,” he explained.
Eventually, his addiction led to him
being homeless from age 22 to 28. He
was incarcerated twice during that
time.
He recalled seeing his daughter,
Thania, visit him in jail crying and it
broke his heart.
Everything changed September 15,
1990 at his son Victor’s 14th birthday.
Rivera was doing crack when Victor
asked him for a quarter.
”He said ‘dad’ again and my son
looked at me with disgust in his face,”
Rivera recalled.
Since that day, 29 years ago, he has
been clean and turned his life around.
But, Rivera told the Bronx Times
he never saw himself as more than a
drug dealer. He was illiterate.
Fortunately, he met Yolanda Rivera,
the CEO of Banana Kelly Community
Improvement Association,
who believed in him.
She got him a job as an outreach coordinator
for drug addicts and helped
him take night classes, where he
learned how to read and write.
He kept pushing himself and got
his GED and bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in public administration and
policy. In two more years he expects to
have a PhD.
He worked for Banana Kelly from
1990 to 2002 and in 2001, launched the
Bronx Parent Housing Network.
Rivera is grateful to everyone that
helped him.
“It makes me have faith in God. It
makes me very humble,” he said.