One Paycheck Away

11/02/13: Robert, 13th and I St NW

When we approach Robert, he is eager to speak with us. His friend, who is sitting beside him on a folding chair, politely excuses himself, and tells me that I can take his seat. When I sit down, Robert says, “You can ask me anything.” He is soft-spoken and eloquent, cutting to the meat of the story with ease. Robert, who has been homeless in DC off and on for 20 years, lost his job as a landscaper and turned up the dial on his recreational drug use to address his growing depression. “One thing led to another, and I was on the streets,” he tells me, making direct eye contact. “When drugs are so easy to get, you just get stuck and it’s hard to get out. So I am just kind of stuck.”

Over the course of his childhood, Robert was bounced from one foster home to another in and around Warsaw, VA. Eventually, he was able to move back with his birth parents. When he first became homeless, Robert stayed in shelters, which he describes as “pure hell, living with all the dirt, bugs, and trifling: you just can’t handle it.” Robert now sleeps on the streets, taking up semi-permanent residence in the park we are sitting in, located in the McPherson Square area of the city.

To stay alive, Robert relies on panhandling, which he says gets him whatever he needs: food, drugs, etc. “You do well when the clubs close,” he mentions. He gets at least one of his meals a day at a food kitchen or from one of the local food relief trucks. “You see people going to work, and it seems like you are living in a different world,” which has been a contributing factor to Robert’s depression and continued drug use. At the time that we interviewed Robert, he was getting ready to begin a two-year drug rehabilitation program at the Salvation Army, which he learned about from a friend. “I see a good future, I just need to get off these drugs.”

09/09/13: Joseph, G St and 24th St NW

Joseph sits on a collapsed cardboard box with his belongings scattered around him. He is seated in what I’ve always considered a rather uncomfortable position. When I ask him his name, he tells me his first, middle, and last and I can smell alcohol on his breath. Joseph has been living on the street for over 40 years. His one commentary on what it’s been like for the past four decades: “Don’t. Be. Homeless.”

Before Joseph started living on the streets, he was driving a scaffolding truck for a living. He doesn’t seem to remember why it was that he stopped working, but he notes that he wasn’t laid off, he quit. He lived with his mother and father, and when his father passed away, he quit his job and moved out of his mother’s house.

As the oldest of nine children growing up in the District, Joseph was not afforded many luxuries. “School life was, oh my God,” he looks up at me while his head is positioned downward and lowers his voice to say, “I didn’t have a lot of food to eat,” as if it were a secret. His father was a construction worker and his mother stayed at home to take care of the children. His siblings are still living in DC, and he is in contact with them from time to time. However, he says, “I hate ‘em because they cry cry cry cry.”

He frequently pauses to consider how he should answer my questions and tells me, “if you were homeless, if you were out here and homeless, it would be bad. You gonna be out here. And the worst thing about it is when you are homeless, the rain starts comin’ down.” I ask Joseph to explain his daily life, and he says, “oh, darling, it is bad. It is real real bad,” he pauses for several seconds and looks around, “I feed the birds, I sit here and feed the birds.” I ask him if that makes him happy, “yes ma’am it sure does, it sure does.” As we thank him and walk away, he raises his hand to say coyly, “you’re pretty.” 

07/23/13: James, Miriam's Kitchen (Foggy Bottom)

We visited Miriam’s Kitchen on a Tuesday. In order to interview James, a regular at Miriam’s, we stepped out of the bustling main room where guests had just finished eating breakfast and into a small office to speak with him. I go into the conversation knowing that he has a medical appointment he needs to get to and that our time is limited. When I tell him about the blog, he takes a moment to assess the situation and says, “I mean, let’s get started!”

James heard about Miriam’s Kitchen through an acquaintance, and decided it was time to make a change. “When I heard about a place I could eat—cuz I like to eat—I said ‘take me down there!’” At first, he came to Miriam's for the meals and ended up participating in the art program that takes place every day after breakfast. “Before I came to Miriam’s, I was living out on the street, smelling, hungry,” he laughs heartily, “after talking to them, they told me there was a better way of living.” He first came to Miriam’s Kitchen in 1998; they helped him to renew his driver’s license, sign up for food stamps, and gain access to health care. About two years ago, James noticed he had been feeling under the weather for several months, and he spoke with his caseworker at Miriam’s about his situation. She referred him to a doctor, but he tells me, “I kept putting it off and putting it off, and then I went in and saw the doctor, they said that I had prostate cancer,” he pauses as I express my sympathy, “I had to get a biopsy, and it turns out the cancer was in six areas of my prostate. I’m going through a remission stage,” James tells me. Without Miriam’s, James would not have found out that he had cancer, and, likely, would have passed away on the streets. “The case managers are really good. They try to work with you and try to get all your needs met. If Miriam’s can’t provide it, they will make sure you get it somewhere else.”

James was born in Washington, DC, and moved to Prince George’s County when he was in elementary school. “I got a little older, my teenage years, when I started high school, I started hookin’ school, drinkin’, druggin’, you know, the crime life, in and out of jail,” James says as he recounts his youth. Addicted to drugs and not able to hold down a steady job in construction, James first became homeless after being laid off from a job, which left him unable to pay rent. “When I got laid off from my job, I started doing drugs and alcohol,” says James.  

He was married once, many years ago, and he also still has family in Maryland. However, over the years they have “become tired” of his substance abuse, and his wife divorced him. “Let me throw this by you real quick: my sister and I got separated when we was little kids. She was seven and I was 10,” he says as he begins to tell me about his sister that he hasn’t seen in 47 years. One day, recently, he received a message on his cell phone from his estranged sister. After speaking with her over the phone, James traveled to Wisconsin to see his sister. He is hoping that his doctor will give him the all clear soon so that he can go back. “You know, those 47 years, that’s a long time that you will never get back; we’ve got a lot of catching up to do” James tells me in sadly serious tone. If it weren’t for Miriam’s, James wouldn’t have had the resources necessary to receive that call from his sister and, ultimately, make that life changing trip.