When I finally Found a Job and Shelter
On September 8th 2014 I was hired by the Downtown
Emergency Service Center. DESC, as it is called by everyone downtown, is a non-profit organization that provides housing and case management services to mentally ill
persons who are chronically homeless. I
suppose it should have been a watershed event in my life, but it wasn't. I was
still homeless and I wasn't sure how I would handle getting off work every
night and not having any place to go and rest my head. On my third day of work, I left the office at
5:00 pm and spent most of the night on Capitol Hill until a security guard at
Seattle Central Community College made me leave. Earlier that day I had lunch
with a YWCA homeless Intervention program specialist, Jennifer. Prior to this meeting we had good rapport and
had a conversation about how bad the affordable housing programs were in
Seattle. Our great rapport seemed to end
rather abruptly when she found out I had problems the last time I received help
from the YWCA to get an apartment through a program called the Landlord Liaison Program.
At the end of our lunch she offered to give
me some bus tickets and I accepted. We
agreed to meet at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill to get me the tickets. When she arrived late I could tell something
was wrong. She was short and seemed to have a whole different attitude and I
realized someone had told her some crap about what happened with my ex-girlfriend and my
initial experience with the Landlord Liasion Project. I took
the tickets, which I needed so the whole thing wasn't a total
loss but I knew she would no longer be of any help to me. That assumption turned
out to be true. The next e-mail I
received from her said her boss told her that I could not get into the LLP
again and she gave me some reason that I knew was bullshit. Any respect I had for her was gone and I
didn't care. All of my emails since have
been somewhat cold. All I need from her
at this point is a voucher for a pair of glasses and I might not even be able to get
those. Whatever. I continued my personal boycott of the
homeless shelters downtown. Instead, I
went to my regular spot on Capitol Hill and enjoyed what seemed like an
endless summer and played some hoops. I really don't understand the "Carrot and Stick" method of servicing the homeless in Seattle. You make one mistake in some program and that's it, you er done. Folks don't seem to realize that homeless guys like me are going to make mistakes before we get it right. That is some of what got us out here on the street in the first place.
I
think I've lost about 5 lbs. since I started playing hoop every day. When I am outside in the sun I cannot help but to feel like this nightmare will soon be over. I know that sooner or later I will find housing if I don't give up, get arrested or do anything really stupid. I come to work on time everyday, I do my best, but I am not doing as well as I thought I would. I have trouble with doing administrative tasks that need to be done in chronological order. Today I admitted to my co-worker, Twinel
that I was homeless. The funny thing
about it was that I actually had to feign being embarrassed and uncomfortable
about it. I've been out here in the
streets so long now that I'm just not embarrassed about it anymore. It is what
it is. Twinel seemed more uncomfortable about it than I was saying to her. After I was kicked out of the
Seattle Central Community College park I went downtown. It was late.
I walked downtown to find another place to sleep. The weather had been getting slightly colder
at night so I was a bit more anxious to find a place to go instead of walking
around for hours trying to find the perfect place – as if there is one.
As I am walking around downtown I notice other homeless people milling around or asking for money. They are like ghosts - lifeless and hopeless. Some of them are loud and try to get attention from the "regulars"(regular people) who calmly ignore them or walk around them like they are a dead carcass on the ground. Most of them smell like a carcass, yet they don't seem to care. I cannot understand that level of hopelessness. It's as if they have simply told themselves that this is where it ends for them. There is this guy I've seen on the street and in the shelters that hold up a sign that has some biblical scripture on it. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing positive about a homeless person holding a sign lauding himself as an example of what Christianity is supposed to do for you. I consider myself a Christian too, but I do not understand how that is in any way a testimony to the world of why a person should become a Christian. A couple of days ago I almost got into a fight with a white woman who became upset when I made a comment about I thought I would not be in the shelter lines next summer. She said I didn't have a fucking clue where I would be in a year. I told her maybe she didn't know where she would be, but I knew that I would have housing and might be giving her my spare change somewhere in the "Blade" by the way she looked. Then I called her a lazy, uneducated bitch. She yelled something about me not saying that if her boyfriend was here and I told her I was willing to patiently wait until he got back and he and I could talk about it. He never came back and I didn't have to beat anyone up that day.
10-17-14
I've been living in a “transitional” clean and sober house
for about two weeks now. After a brief
stay at a homeless shelter with beds called Peter's Place, the director (who
initially got me into the place) offered me a bed here and I promptly took him
up on the offer. The room is one of five in the basement of a house located in
unincorporated King County somewhere between Burien and Tukwila. When I moved in I must admit it was a good
feeling, but also somewhat anti-climactic because I'm just too old to get
excited about living with five other guys and sharing a living space with other
people. The room came pre-furnished with a bed a dresser, a book-case, a decent
closet, and a night-stand. It does feel good to actually place my clothes in a
dresser and hang up my dress shirts again.
I haven't done that in five years.
I've learned the bus routs to work and I've quickly jumped back into the
hustle and bustle of working life and commuting via Metro. The director of this transitional house is a
man named Alfred White. I still sleep on the floor sometimes and that seems very strange to me that it sometimes feels more comfortable than sleeping in a bed.
Alfred is an
interesting man. He runs three transitional houses, and is trying to create a
new mental health program that he thinks will be more effective than the
Housing First model utilized by DESC. He
was once a strung-out crack-head and street thug who turned his life
around. His story is actually very
interesting. He's very motivated and
appears to know what he wants to accomplish.
Alfred has asked me to be the house manager for this house and I
accepted. Ironically, I'm still
drinking. Stopped smoking weed though.
While I was homeless and working, I was smoking a lot of weed. I supposed “a lot” is a relative term, but it
was a lot as far as I'm concerned. I
don't need to do it now, so I don't.
Working and getting a paycheck is so new to me. I got my first check for $825.00 and yes, I
went hog-wild buying stuff. Spent the entire check in two weeks. My second
check I bought a car – 1986 Pontiac Fiero SE.
It's a beater. I paid $850.00 for the car and am hoping to get at least
that when I trade it in on something else in a few weeks. It has taken me five years to get almost back
to where I was before all this shit happened to me. I don't have a job making 36K a year, but it
feels like it because I don't have Micah (my ex-wife) to pay for anymore.
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