While growing up in the Bronx, Benny Rodriguez had his first encounter with homelessness after his father lost his job.

When he was 15, Rodriquez and his brother entered foster care and quickly learned about the tough road ahead of him.
“There was some difficulty in terms of the foster brothers I had at the time,” Rodriguez says. “Sometimes we didn’t get along – I was the only light skinned guy there a lot of the time and nobody spoke Spanish. Growing up, I never knew where I belonged.”

When he was in high school, Rodriguez was confronted by a professor that was head of the Law Institute program. He told him if he’d get an 85 average by the next semester, he would let Rodriguez into the Law Institute Program.

“Lo and behold, I got into the honor roll junior year and the last two years of high school,” he says. “I was able to be in the Law Institute Program. I’m happy that even through high school, I was able to get an opportunity, which is something that motivates me even today. I’m able to provide that same opportunity to people who are less fortunate that I am.”
Recently promoted to Senior Medical Case Manager at Care for the Homeless, Rodriguez is able to do supportive counseling to people who are in the same position he was in at one point in his life. He feels it’s a unique way he can help them because he knows first-hand what it feels like to not know where you belong.

“I enjoy the work I do,” he says of his work at CFH. “Sort of like a giving back approach. It’s been an exciting feeling for me to go through the foster care system and now see clients who have been part of the foster system. It’s just exciting.”