This didn’t start as an organization. It started as people.

Marin Peer Resource Community Collective didn’t begin with a grant, a board, or a business plan. It began with a phone call. Someone from Five Loaves Two Fish had food and didn’t know where unhoused people were. They called Bambi—not because she had a title, but because she was already out there. Already listening. Already showing up.

She led them to the grass behind CVS. None of us knew then that this exact patch of ground would later become something historic: the first peer-operated, city-sanctioned encampment in California. But looking back now, it feels fated. Because that’s how this work has always moved—through people, not systems.

Before the pandemic. Before the policies. Before the headlines. This was before COVID. Before “shelter in place” orders that assumed everyone had shelter. People weren’t taking over a park. They were surviving. And instead of criminalizing them, peers organized. Not professionals swooping in. Not agencies with clipboards. Peers—people with lived experience—who knew what safety actually looks like on the ground.

Camp Compassion wasn’t perfect. But it was human. Over five years, forty-one people moved from Camp Compassion into permanent housing. With ongoing peer support. Not abandonment at the door.

MPRCC exists because we’ve lived the gaps. We know what it’s like to be invisible. We know what it’s like when help comes with conditions that erase your voice. Peer-led means walking alongside, not above. And this blog exists to tell the truth.