Helping people reclaim lives lost: We restore hope and dignity by offering opportunities for health and self-sufficiency. New York City‘s Bowery neighborhood was once a place where people went to hide from their problems, finding refuge in makeshift shelters and flophouses that offered little more than four-foot by six-foot cubicles with chicken wire roofs, dingy mattresses, and a single bare lightbulb. Most of the men that lived on the Bowery – New York‘s “Skid Row” – were addicted to alcohol and drugs, beset by physical and mental illness, without shelter and without hope. Most, but not all. In 1971, a handful of these Bowery residents began to take control of their lives, and to change them for the better. This small group of men created a self-help day program where sober men could escape despair and support one another. Initially called the “The Social Rehabilitation Club for Public Inebriates,” this mutual-aid would eventually grow into the The Bowery Residents‘ Committee (BRC) that we know today.