If Derrick Phipps looks familiar to you, that’s probably because you’ve seen him begging for money on the streets of Hamilton or finding shelter in a shop doorway.

But you probably haven’t seen him doing that in a while — because Mr Phipps is no longer one of the Island’s 300-plus homeless people.

Thanks to the Salvation Army’s Harbour Light programme, he kicked his substance abuse addiction and found a place to live last year.

Now the 59-year-old Bermudian is focusing his energies on helping others who are living rough, as an advocate for the homeless and a member of City Hall’s Committee on Homelessness in the City of Hamilton.

And he is looking for a full-time job in what might sound like an unlikely field for a former “street person” but for which he says he is fully qualified and very experienced — corporate law.

“I’m very pleased to be given this opportunity,” he told The Royal Gazette. “Growing up in the inner city of New York and living in San Francisco, becoming a professional person as a lawyer, I never dreamed I would one day be homeless myself.

“Having had this experience and had a substance abuse problem, you learn firsthand about the different challenges and one of the things that I noticed personally was the fact that I didn’t know how and where to get help.”

Mr Phipps lived in Bermuda until he was about ten, when he moved to the US with his mother, Rosalind Shepherd.

As an adult, he held down a successful career as a pensions lawyer and had a wife, from whom he is now divorced, and a son.

“I used to be a world-class runner in Bermuda too,” he said. “That’s how I got to college. I got married at Marylebone in London, where I did my internship. I have lived all over.”

But his life took a downward turn when he returned to the Island 12 years ago. “I came back to get work and it was rather depressing because I used to write legislation in DC and San Francisco.

“I travelled all over the world in my field and couldn’t get a job here. Depression set in and I started to medicate with cocaine.”

Mr Phipps said the turning point came when he was convicted of possession of $15 worth of cocaine.

The conviction meant he could not return to the US, as he had never taken citizenship there in the hopes of one day entering politics in Bermuda, and so has yet to meet his two grandchildren.

“I went and got help for my condition through the Salvation Army: Harbour Light. That was only the spiritual component. There are qualified professionals who really do a great job.

“[But] one thing I really noticed is the disjointed efforts and the non coordination of the helping agencies.”

He said the committee’s aim was to create a shelter for the homeless where all kinds of help was available, through a far more coordinated approach because “each aspect of being homeless plays out many different ways”.

“It seems to me it’s just a political football,” he said of the issue of helping the needy. “They have been discussing having a mental health court that’s supposed to be three weeks away for the last three years.”

Mr Phipps said he finally got off the streets because: “I made a commitment to God that if he helped me, that I would help myself.” He added: “I’m trying.”