About

Kasey’s Kitchen starts with lived experience.

Casey O’Neal founded Kasey’s Kitchen out of his own experience of addiction and homelessness.

He worked in the mortgage industry for years. Then addiction took over, and he lost his family and ended up living on the streets of Phoenix. He knows what it is to have a life come apart, and what it takes to begin again.

He credits the social service organizations that helped him find his way back. Later he went to work for a homeless outreach organization, where he trained in peer support. Working that closely with people on the street, he saw how many were slipping through gaps that the existing organizations couldn’t cover.

So he started doing what he could on his own, one person at a time. Using relationships he’d built over the years, he gathered donated food and supplies and brought them directly to the people who needed them. That hand-to-hand work became Kasey’s Kitchen, now a registered 501(c)(3), so the help can reach more people in a steadier, more organized way.

The need is real and growing. The most recent county count found nearly 9,700 people experiencing homelessness in Maricopa County on a single night, the highest number on record, and the people doing the counting say the real figure is almost certainly higher. Many stay on the street despite wanting to work and rebuild, priced out by rent, food, transportation, and medicine, and unsure how to reach the help that does exist.