- Video shows Steven passing out food, stats on the state of homelessness, homeless individuals in downtown Bakersfield
- Tee Steven, a former Bakersfield rockstar, began serving food to the homeless after he saw how much good food restaurants dumped at the end of the day.
Bakersfield made its name in the music industry with artists like Buck Owens and Korn and now one former Bakersfield rockstar is taking his passions beyond music.
“One of my favorite things about being a performer was always looking in the crowd and seeing the smiling faces,” Tee Stevens, the man behind the band "Lions Named Leo."
Now he’s rocking and rolling through downtown Bakersfield on a new mission to combat an issue that struck a chord with him.
“Most people look the other way when they see homeless people, and I’m like a radar,” Steven said.
Packing up his electric bike with bags of food and throwing on his signature helmet, he rolls out, still taking his music with him as he provides food to the homeless community in downtown Bakersfield, and many of the people out on the streets recognize him for the meals his fed them in the past.
One local woman asks if he has any more potatoes, thanking him for the time he gave her that hot meal.
The Bakersfield-Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative 'Point In Time' report identified close to 2000 homeless people in Kern county in 2023.
Steven tries to make life a little bit easier for some of that population.
He approaches a couple men, sitting on the street.
“Hey guys, you hungry?” Steven asked.
The men replied homeless men replied, “Yes. Yes. Oh man.”
Steven rode away, promising to return with a hot meal, and he calls each person he meets brothers and sisters.
It’s emotional moments with his unhoused family that move him to tears.
“It shouldn’t happen," he wept. "I come across three dead bodies last month and a half. That’s sobering, very sobering.”
From 2022 to 2023, the homeless population grew by 22%.
“We still have a chronic problem," ward 2 city councilman Andrae Gonzales said. "We still have more and more people finding themselves on the streets of Bakersfield every single night, so we have to curb that inflow of people into homelessness."
In the new year, Gonzales plans to do that by expanding day center hours, helping move people into permanent affordable housing, and supporting the study of the causes of homelessness.
“What we want to do is not alleviate the pain of homelessness necessarily but also move people into housing so that they move out of homelessness,” Gonzales explained.
New laws like SB 4 removes barriers to allow nonprofits and religious organizations to build affordable housing on their property, and SB 423 which expands existing laws to increase affordable housing in cities that are failing to meet state housing planning goals hopes to make that happen statewide, but here locally, Stevens does his part to make a big difference.
“I just know that I do what I can everyday, and I hope it will spread like my music,” Steven laughed.
If you would like to support Tee Stevens in his outreach to the homeless, you can contact him at 661-472-7203.
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