A look at the history behind Tucson's Primavera Foundation

A few sit at computers or telephones; others use the restrooms.

A city shower van is parked in front. Aides provide towels and distribute socks and underwear. A young man, hair still wet, emerges from a stall wearing a clean tracksuit; a middle-aged man in a wheelchair waits his turn.

It’s an active Thursday morning at the Primavera Foundation Homeless Intervention and Prevention Drop-in Center on South Sixth Avenue.

Volunteer Nancy Bissell, 85, steps away from behind the counter to show a visitor around. She has been distributing hygiene products — razors, soap, shampoo, tampons, Band-Aids, lip balm.

At the counter, another volunteer offers snacks, a third takes requests for assistance or clothing, a fourth retrieves participants’ mail. In an adjacent office, a staff member counsels a woman. Recipients consistently thank them, often adding a “have a good day.”

Bissell nods toward groups at the courtyard coffee station and tables. “It’s like a living room for them,” she says proudly.

Bissell has reason to be proud. Forty-two years ago, she and just one other person — Gordon Packard — founded this enterprise.

From a two-person project to serve food to the poor, the Primavera Foundation has grown to a staff of more than 200. It served north of 8,000 people last year, with volunteers racking up 1,370 shifts.

Later, in her Armory Park home, Bissell recounts the history of the foundation. In the 1970s and ‘80s, she says, homelessness was on the rise. Manufacturing was drying up in the East, and men, particularly, began coming west in search of work.

Along with Reagan policies and changes in mental health treatment, Tucson began seeing more homeless people on the streets. It was in response to an admonition by the pastor of their church, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal, that Bissell and Packard acted.

Rev. John C. Fowler “told us to get off our knees and out into the world,” she says. The year 1982 was a time of social activism led by clerics in Tucson, and “it was that aspect of Christianity that we were attracted to.”

They thought they would start with a soup kitchen. But that wouldn’t proceed without glitches.

Supported by the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, in 1982, Bissell and Packard opened a daily feeding program in a building adjacent to the Armory Park neighborhood. They called it St. Martin’s Center and staffed it with a couple hundred mostly Episcopalian volunteers.

Armory Park, however, didn’t welcome the population the center attracted — as was borne out in local politics and local and national press: “The last thing we want to do,” Newsweek quoted Tucson Mayor Lew Murphy as saying, “is provide them with amenities.”

The neighborhood filed a lawsuit against the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona that got up to the Arizona Supreme Court. Primavera lost and St. Martin’s Center closed after two years.

Even though Bissell had to defend Primavera in court, it was, she claims, “a great learning experience.” They learned how to “deal better with neighborhoods and community groups, to build cooperation person by person.” Which is what they applied to the next challenge — emergency housing.

In September 1983, Bissell and Packard incorporated as an independent nonprofit called Primavera and strategized to avoid a repeat of the Armory Park misstep.

Finding a parcel on Benson Highway, they reached out to the surrounding businesses. They pointed out that the homeless people would be off the streets if they had a place to sleep, and assured neighbors that participants would be transported in and out of the shelter evenings and mornings.

They landed a generous construction grant from Hands Across America and built the Primavera Men’s Shelter. Opened in 1986, with a capacity of 110, the Men’s Shelter offered showers, beds and meals, and is still in operation.

As Bissell wrote in a 2020 booklet, “The Daily Banquet: Stories of Nourishment from the Primavera Foundation,” volunteers have been integral to the foundation’s success. A schedule was established whereby teams — church groups, families, school or fraternal organizations — provided home-cooked dinners every night. The program expanded to breakfasts and sack lunches and would grow to “meal teams” of over 1,000 people.

Once the shelter was established, Primavera addressed employment and housing. They started with several transitional programs and some small housing units. They built a shelter for homeless women, several shelters for families, and even one for grandparents raising their grandchildren.

To connect workers with jobs, they set up a program called “Primavera Works” that included classes in financial literacy and skills essential to re-entering the workforce.

Today, under the motto “Providing Pathways out of Poverty,” the Primavera Foundation provides multiple “pathways”: the men’s shelter and housing for unaccompanied women and families, affordable rental housing, veterans’ services, homelessness intervention and prevention, workplace development, homeownership and financial empowerment.

When she was approached about this profile on her retirement volunteering, Bissell hesitated.

“The big successes at Primavera came after I retired from a leadership role,” she said. But she agreed as long as the focus was on the foundation. “It’s a great pleasure to return to it anonymously as a volunteer and not be recognized by most folks.”

“Here,” she said that Thursday as she handed out shampoo and razors, “I’m just Nancy.”

“Just Nancy,” right — without whom the Primavera Foundation wouldn’t exist.

For more information, visit primavera.org.