I am not your typical homeless person. I am white, grew up in a Middle-Class home, never used drugs or alcohol, and started a college education with a major that could not help but pay well.
But something went wrong along the way. The best I could manage in education was an associate’s degree in Computer Science. It wasn’t enough for the big bucks or the jobs that would lead to the big bucks.
I made a series of bad decisions. But from my perspective, the worst was changing my major from French to Computer Science. The math killed me. I’m smart, but not quite that smart. Perhaps I could have excelled in Management Information Systems, but I didn’t realize that at the time. I know that if I had stayed with French, there would always be teaching. But the goal was to be a translator.
By the time I had realized my mistake, it was too late. I started on a path to mediocrity and bad decisions. My family lost faith in me after helping me out too many times.
I started my trip into the world of being homeless in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was a decent shelter and gave me the best impression of a shelter I’ve ever had.
It all went downhill from there. I stayed at two different shelters in Roanoke, VA, both run by religious organizations. Both were demanding in some way or the other. I’m not a religious person and felt oppressed when it was forced on me. I got out of that situation as soon as possible and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina.
I had found a shelter system there that I thought would meet my needs. My first time through there, it seemed to do the trick. I found a job, moved into transitional housing, and then into my own apartment. I seemed to have beaten the system. But four years later, I was in it again.
A lost job, a lost apartment, back to the system I went. But I found another job quickly and moved into temporary housing in the form of a motel, someplace I could call home and not have it cost me a fortune in application fees and deposits. I seemed on my way again.
But six months later, I was back in, having left the last job due to stress. Let me tell you about stress. Stress makes you sick to your stomach. It gave me migraines that made it impossible to work.
And this time, I didn’t find a job so easily, having been black-listed by my former employer. Days turned into weeks, months, and before I knew it, years.
Temporary homelessness seems easy compared to chronic homelessness. Being homeless for too long weighs you down, tears at your soul until you want it to end in any way possible.
There’s a bridge between downtown Raleigh and the shelter. A railroad track passes under it, and a train goes by at times. Every time I walked over that bridge, from the time I first entered that shelter until I finally broke free of it, I thought about throwing myself off it. Every. Time. Twice a day. I imagined a train was coming, and I hurled myself off it, onto that train.
Why would a sane person do that?
What goes on there that would drive someone to do that? Oh, sure, shelter life truly sucks. Living with a few hundred other men in close quarters, with some of them stealing your stuff daily, eating food barely fit for consumption and not designed for your best health – yeah, that’s a part of what makes it so bad. But it’s the toll on your soul that’s the worst part.
In a non-homeless life, you have a certain amount of freedom, depending on your budget. You can come and go from your abode when you want or need to. You can eat what you want, maybe even healthy food. Sure, for your freedom, you must pay the price – rent or mortgage, food, education, health care. All are things “normal” people take for granted.
But at a shelter, you get woken up before dawn. You have to leave after breakfast, presumably to look for work, though many people went to the library to use their computers. When the day is almost done, you trudge back to the shelter to see if you have a bed. If not, you go elsewhere.
Once I laid on a bench in Downtown Raleigh and looked at the stars. If you have a bed, you check in but can’t leave without possibly losing your bed until the next 4:30 am wake up.
You have no privacy in the shelter.
I could be lying in my bed reading a book, and someone would come over asking what I was reading. You take showers with one or more men. You try to filter out all the talk and noise, but it’s not easy. Fights break out, robberies happen, drugs get traded, and no one seems to care.
In the shelter, you have very little health care. You must give your prescription drugs to the staff who will dole them out at the right time. That’s if you’re lucky to get a prescription and have the money or assistance to buy them. The clinic isn’t close to the shelter, so you either walk for miles or finagle a bus pass. Bus passes are a precious commodity to homeless people.
But what takes the most toll is the lack of hope. Hope keeps me alive. Every time I looked over that bridge or walked to an escalator, wanting to throw myself off, I asked myself: Do you still have hope? And every time, the answer was yes.
My last bout with homelessness was in Boston. I was actually working at the time, making $40,000/year. But the house I was renting a room from got sold out from under me. I knew this in advance, and I spent months looking for alternative housing, coming close a few times, but it never materialized.
I lived in motels again. But motels in Boston aren’t cheap. I was spending more in motels than renting a room in a house. It got to the point where I knew I had to enter another shelter, and I gave serious thought to ending it, right there in the motel room, maybe even streaming it live. But I asked myself that question again. Have I lost hope?
Again the answer was no. I had a job, and I just needed to stick it out. I entered the shelter and promptly got robbed by someone so strong they could lift my locked locker high enough to open it. Staff did not care that I’d lost my wallet, ID, and credit cards.
I almost – almost lost it there. But I went into work, canceled the cards I had, and ordered new ones. Replacing the Driver’s License would prove problematic and took me another six years to complete.
But I persevered, moved again at the request of my employer, and here I am in Jacksonville, Florida.
I managed to find a room to rent then moved into my own apartment. But that job ran out on me, and I went through another period where I thought I would be homeless.
I needed time to get my ID replaced, which required sending a form to the Department of State, and waiting more than three months to get my Birth Certificate. That was three months when I could not look for a job or apply for benefits. I had some money saved but started to fall behind on rent. Thankfully I had an understanding landlord, who gave me every bit of time I needed … well, not really. I had until the end of September to pay $4,000 in back rent and fees. That feeling of hopelessness came back for the first time in six years.
I put up a GoFundMe page, which drew some interest, but in the end, I had to beg my stepfather to bail me out. “For the last time,” he said.
I had applied for aid from GoFlorida. The aid came almost too late, but in the end, four months of rent were paid. I found a part-time job that paid some of the bills, but that money wasn’t enough for the long-term. The rent money ran out, but I could pay the small amount due in February. That panicked feeling came over me again. And once again, I thought of ending it rather than going into a shelter.
But the last few days, hope has returned.
I found a full-time job working from home, but I fear I won’t have enough to make March rent. And the thing that crosses my mind more than anything else is: How can I work from home without a home?
I started writing a script while I was homeless in Raleigh called ‘Working from Homeless,’ which tells the story of a man in my position. I didn’t get far into it because I was too close to it. This was MY story, and I couldn’t tell it, even pretending to be someone else!
My future is still uncertain, but right now, I still have that hope. Please understand that the next time someone begs for help, homelessness comes with a terrible price.
