Doug Biggs’ career in community development began in Nepal in 1977, first with the Peace Corps and then with CARE International. In 1987, he made the move back to the States and landed in Alameda. For the last 20 years, he’s been the executive director of Alameda Point Collaborative (APC).

After the move, Biggs began working for an organization called the San Francisco Conservation Corps, which was a youth development program that taught basic construction skills to 18-24-year-olds. He was the development director, in charge of raising money for the organization. 10 years later, he moved on to an organization called Sojourn to the Past, which took high school kids to the South to study the Civil Rights movement.
“For me, that was a personal kind of treat because I got to go and meet many of the heroes that I’d grown up hearing about during the Civil Rights movement,” he told the Alameda Post. “I was born in ’55, and so I was around for a lot of that. But to get to meet John Lewis, members of Little Rock 9… Just a real dream come true for me.”
A few years later, Biggs found himself wanting to feel more connected to the community in which he lived. “Because, again, my background throughout all this has been community development,” he said. “And I heard about the development position at the Alameda Point Collaborative and I applied for it and got it.”
He started out as the development director, raising money for the organization and then became the interim executive director, which eventually became a permanent position.
Right away, Biggs felt the rewards of working in his own community.
“I think that’s special to know that you’re making an impact in your community and not another one, but this position in particular, it is so resident centered,” he said. “I’m not working for the residents, I’m working with them. In fact, residents are my bosses. We have residents who serve on our board of directors. We have residents that are in permanent employment here at APC. So it’s really a shared responsibility.”
Biggs has loved witnessing resident success stories first-hand. “Every time I come in, there’s a resident up here getting work done and they always take the time to say hi and tell me what their latest accomplishment is,” he said. “Whether it’s going back to school or getting a job, we just hear about it consistently.”
One of the most rewarding parts of the job, for Biggs, is the real change the organization is creating to combat homelessness. “We’re changing the curve on homelessness,” he said. “We’re breaking barriers that create new opportunities for people who’ve been homeless with our wellness center that we’re building down on McKay Avenue, a state of the art, nationally recognised model for providing medical services for homeless individuals. Knowing that APC is making a difference on a national scale is really rewarding.”
The job has also come with plenty of challenges.
“One of the big challenges has just been the government agencies that are supposed to be helping you solve the problem are often creating the problem themselves,” he said. “The disincentives for people to work that are put in place by the Social Services Administration—because if you work too much, you’ll lose your benefits. These conveyances that we’ve been doing where we convey property from the federal government to private services, which is what we did down at McKay Avenue, they just make the process very complicated and very challenging and a lot more expensive than it should be. So it’s kind of mind boggling that those that are in charge of the solution are sometimes the biggest problem makers.”

Biggs says he finds motivation in another challenging facet of the job. “You know, there’s definitely a small but very vocal anti-homeless contingency anywhere, including in Alameda,” he told the Post. “And they’ve attempted on various occasions to try and block our projects. But that always provides motivation because I know we have ‘right’ on our side. I know we’re doing the right thing and so we just keep doing it.”
Currently, APC is at the halfway point of completing their medical respite center at McKay Avenue, which will provide 50 beds for medical patients, and aims to serve over 400 people a year. At Alameda Point, APC is focused on the RESHAP Project, which is the rebuilding of their existing supportive housing. They’re also adding more than 130 units of new housing. Additionally, APC is partnering with the Alameda Housing Authority in building 45 units at North Housing. At full capacity, they’ll have 90 units for unhoused individuals. Over the next few years, APC will have almost doubled the amount of housing available for unhoused individuals in Alameda.
Friday, November 15, at 5:30 p.m., APC is celebrating their 25th anniversary at 2550 Monarch St. The evening will be dedicated to honoring the success of a quarter-century of housing and services for our unsheltered neighbors. The evening will also commemorate Biggs’ retirement, as he has announced he will step down at the end of the year.
Biggs says he’ll miss the APC staff the most.
“The staff we have at APC is amazing, highly talented,” he said. “50% of them have lived experience of homelessness. So they’re really experts. And it’s just been phenomenal to work with these folks and see the success that we’ve had. And I think that’s what I’ll miss the most, is being able to put together a team like this and watch them take off and do marvelous things.”
In retirement, Biggs will continue to help with the development of certain APC projects on a consulting basis. He’s also looking forward to rolling up his sleeves to help change the national legislation around how properties are conveyed.
“Since the law was passed in the ’90s, there’s been 10,000 federal facilities that have been suitable for conveyance and less than 100 have actually been conveyed,” he said. “So I think the federal government could do a lot better on that. So I’ll work with some other advocates to work on getting real changes in the law, open up the pipeline for more properties to be conveyed.”
Besides that, he’s looking forward to spending more time with his grandkids.
Kelsey Goeres is the Managing Editor of the Alameda Post. Contact her via [email protected]. Her writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Kelsey-Goeres.