Our Mission Life of a Salt Lake Street News is a nonprofit...

Life of a Katrina Evacuee

Utah welcomed Curtis Crosby in Sep-tember of 2005. After the life changing events of Hurricane Katrina.

Curtis came into the Salt Lake City Mis-sion in May of 2007. That’s where he first met Pastor Bill and Pam. At this time he was having trouble with his I.D. so we

prayed and Curtis said the Lord answered his prayer. He remembered how kind the people were at the Mission so he came back when he was being evicted from his apartment of 2.5 years. He said the reason for the eviction was because of a late re-sponse in change-over in housing assis-tance from the previous agency C.L.C. to Housing Authority.

In January 2008, Housing Authority no-tified Curtis that they were now handling Katrina Evacuee’s housing assistance. See KATRINA pg. 15

"I was coming back from one of my clinic appoints and I saw this big thing of homeless peo-ple, and then I thought I should just get them something," he said.

Though Brendon is too sick to pay a visit to the camp, a group of his friends went to distribute food to the camp on Friday. "We're making 200 sandwiches -- half ham and cheese, and half peanut butter and jelly. He did-n't want them all to be peanut butter and jelly in case some-body was allergic to peanut but-ter," said one of the volunteers, J e n n i f e r M o r r i s o n . As for Brendan himself, he has no regrets about his short life: "I had a great time and un-til my time has come, I'm gonna keep having a good time," he said.

Dying Boy's Last Wish Is to Help H o m e l e s s Diagnosed with leukemia, 11-year- old Brendan Foster of Lynnwood, Washington, likely has just days left to live. "I should be gone in a week or so," he told KOMO News. But before the boy says goodbye, he has one last wish—and it has noth-ing to do with meeting his favorite rock star or going to Disney World. Instead, the selfless child decided that his dying wish would be to help others survive, with a mission to provide food to the residents of a nearby homeless camp, Nickelsville

Our Mission Salt Lake Street News is a nonprofit newspaper geared towards people experiencing homelessness and pov-

erty right now by validating their reality. And through information, advocacy, and self-expression we will overcome ignorance and create opportunity for real

change, not spare change.

MAY/JUNE 2010

Pg. 2 Longtime Streetwise Vendors have Home to Call Their Own

Pg. 2 Blue Line Combs through Campsite–homeless Arrest Comes

Pg. 3 Hitting Bottom: Sometimes Denial is the Pillow Left

Pg. 3 How Homelessness Affects Mental & Emotional Health

Pg. 4 On Trying to Recover While Homeless

Pg. 4 Barriers to Finding Work when Homeless

Pg 5 Recognizing the ―Soul Wound‖ of War

Pg 6 Finding a Firm Foundation

Pg 7 Place of Poetry

Pg 8 The Street Gives & Takes

Pg 9 What Happens at the 4th Street Clinic

Pg 10 Greg’s Story: Down & Out & Back Again

Head Lines

$1 Suggested

Donation

Vol 1 / No. 1

Longtime StreetWise

Vendors have a Home to call their Own

BEN COOK April 7, 08

Longtime StreetWise ven-dors Lydia Brown and An-thony Smith have been an item for 13 years, and even after all of their years togeth-er, they still kid each other constantly, trying to get a rise out of each other. Anthony starts off the trouble making by saying that I shouldn’t listen to Lydia because, “She’s already been drinking today…” to which Lydia re-sponds “I hope you don’t mind if I leave him here. You can have him for a nickel.” Aside from the tongue-in-cheek riffing, the two have stuck together through hard-ships, using teamwork to overcome difficulty. They count on each other all day, every day, and their longevi-ty speaks to their commit-ment. A constant source of stress and strain for years has been finding decent, handicap-accessible housing, a place that they can call their See VENDOR pg. 15

Blue Line Combs through

Campsite – Homeless

Arrests come to Nickelsville

Cyndey Gillis

October 6, 2008

Aaron Colyer had built a little shack to house the pink tent that the organizers of Nickelsville gave him. He had painted part of the shack pink to match, and he was sitting out front Friday after-noon as he waited for the police to come.

When they did, Colyer, a fresh-faced young veteran of the Marine Corps., wasn’t shy about trying to talk the officers out of arresting him and a fellow Nickelodeon sitting at a tent nearby. “The Constitution says we have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Colyer began while the officers were still a few tents away. “You know you guys have a choice in the matter. You can choose not to do this.

What are they going to do, fire you?”

The officers paid no mind, continuing to lift and look in tents for any unseen stragglers. Then they came to Colyer’s shack, following the same procedure as the five other arrests they had already made. An officer bent over and asked Colyer if he understood that, if he didn’t leave, he would be charged with criminal tres-pass.

Colyer said yes. Like the others, officers lifted him to his feet and took him away in the hot sun to the ap-plause and cheers of Nick-eleons and onlookers on the other side of a 26-officer line of blue that slowly but surely was clearing the camp of the occupants who took the city lot along West Marginal Way SW five days before, dubbing it Nickels-ville in honor of the mayor and his policy of sweeping homeless camps on public property.

The arrests, all 22 of them, went on for an hour. But when the blue line finally topped a little hill overlook-ing a parking lot just west of Nickelsville, they stopped. It was a small but notable vic-tory for the homeless and their advocates, who had been on the phone that

morning asking Gov. Christine Gregoire to in-tervene — and she did.

Sometime after 1 p.m., after a city worker had announced that the field was Seattle Department of Transportation proper-ty and the Nickelodeons would have to leave, after the police had already made their first arrests at the east end of the field, Ron Judd, a senior aide to the governor, charged onto the field, telling the Seattle officers that the governor had given her permission for the tent dwellers to stay five more days in the tiny parking lot, which is owned by the Washington State De-partment of Transporta-tion, not the city.

It’s a move that the 140 or so Nickelodeons, who put up the renegade tent city in the early morning hours of Sept. 22, had hoped and planned for. Before dawn, in a desper-ate attempt to stand their ground, many had dragged their tents through the field and up over the hill to the park-ing lot in hopes the gov-ernor would come through — a desperate measure that worked. See BLUE pg. 14 NEED HELP

FINDING HELP? 2-1-1

Information & Referral 801-978-3333

5/19/2010 SALT LAKE STREET NEWS

SALT LAKE STREET NEWS ESTABLISHED May1, 2010.

PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY SALT LAKE CITY MISSION

320 WEST 200 SOUTH SUITE 120B SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84101

Office: 8013556310

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to SLCM at the above address.

705 S 700 E– SLC, UT 84102

801-537-1433

2

Hitting Bottom: Some-times

Denial is the Only Pil-low Left

(Street Vibes, USA) Michael Henson October 13, 2008

Two days ago I saw a man passed out on the sidewalk in broad daylight. This is a fairly common thing to see in the neigh-borhood where I saw the man and a fairly common thing to see in any major city. He had a ragged beard and mismatched clothes, and his legs were bare to the knee. His feet were in the street, and he was stretched out onto the sidewalk as if his feet were on the floor at home and he was stretched out in his own comfortable bed. One hand shaded his eyes from the sun. Then yesterday, a block away from where I saw the first man, I saw another. The first was black. This one was white. He had lain himself on his side with a stone for a pillow It was clear that he, too, had passed out where he was, for he lay on the open sidewalk-not on a bench or i n a d o o r -w a y . Surely, each of them has reached bottom. Half-starved, poisoned by cheap alcohol and crack cocaine, sick, malodorous from sweat and weak bladders and bowels, it doesn’t seem likely people like these can fall any lower. It doesn’t seem likely they can take any more. Yet it’s not likely that we’ll see them in the circle at any of the meetings around the corner or just down the street. Help is just a few stumbling steps away but I doubt they will stumble over there just yet. If you ask them, they’ll probably tell you this is the worst they have had it. But if you suggest they get

help, they will complain that the rules are too strict, or I tried it and they kicked me out, or they told me I had to have a state ID. Some excuse will rise up and present itself as an ob-stacle. The bottom is only the bot-tom if the addict feels it as the bottom. I remember Philip from the East End. When I first knew him, he was living in an aban-doned building with no plumb-ing. For electricity, he ran a power cord to the house next door. To flush his toilet, he had to wait until it rained. A sweet guy, he would help anybody but himself. He would bring me kids who were getting in trouble, and he would put up friends gone homeless in his rickety building. But when I asked him about getting help for himself, he always told me he couldn’t. We would go around and around but it always came to one thing: Who would take care of his dog? I called that dog an excuse with a tail. Eventually, the dog died, and so did Philip. He was three months sober and going to meetings, but so poisoned with alcohol and his liver gone so cirrhotic that his skin had turned a shade of walnut and his arms and legs were clouded with purple bruises and the disease took him under. Why is it that some people find their bottom on the first little bump — a DUI or a warning from a spouse? Why is it that others will drink and drug themselves into disease and death? I’m sure there are many rea-sons, and you can find them listed in any basic text on sub-stance abuse and chemical dependency. Go to the chapter on denial and it will tell you all about it. Denial is a feature of any chronic disease — cancer, diabetes, heart disease. See Bottom pg 14

3 5/19/2010

How Homelessness Af-fects Mental and Emotional Health

Jessica P. Morrell and Ginny Nelson

Harris was an early cus-tomer. When he walked in the door without his mental health under control, he’d talk in a different voice to himself or anyone who would listen, and would do things out of the ordinary. Once Harris was sitting at the counter with another gentleman. Harris lit a match and held it to this man’s coat. Immediately I said, “Harris, remember you’re in Sisters Of The Road. Blow the match out! You cannot set someone’s coat on fire in Sisters Of The Road.” He looked at me, blew the match out, and w a s “ b a c k . ” No matter how wounded people are, we ask them to be accountable. Elsewhere, someone’s behavior would immediately send people to the phone to dial 911. We speak the truth instead: name the behavior, call on them to remember they’re in Sisters, and ask them to hold themselves together and come back to a place where they won’t hurt them-selves or others. I’m not saying it’s always success-ful; rarely, someone has crossed the line and become hurtful. But the constant practice of holding people accountable has created an environment where people dealing with mental health issues truly feel respected and safe. A great number of our narrators suffered

from depression, mental illness, and emotional problems. A third of them identified themselves as having a mental health issue or reported being diagnosed with one. Natu-rally this is a huge physi-cal health risk, especially if they are psychotic or delusional while living on the streets. A number of narrators commented how dangerous the streets were for the mentally ill and how inadequate the ser-vices were for them. Stan: But the system

i t s e l f , we’re try-ing to look at rehabili-t a t i o n , we’re not looking at p e o p l e trying to

keep us down and lower our self-esteem. You walk into a food stamp office, I feel that I should be cared about. Show me concern. If you burn out from your job, move on, give it to somebody else that cares. But don’t just sit there and take it out on me or what Joe Blow did before I came in there, you know. You’re just being treated in society, sometimes you’re already down. You don’t need anybody else beating you up. You know, show me what I need to do. And if you can’t, lead me in the right direction. And I’m seeing a lot of that not happening. There are a lot of times when you feel like you just want to go to a park bench some EMOTION pg. 14

SALT LAKE STREET NEWS

4 5/19/2010

or others, is one of the clear-est and most compassionate messages Sisters has ever put out. Over the years, services around us have changed; now, to stay at a shelter or get services people must often take a urine test; they have to be clean and sober. We believe you can‟t take away every point of entry into the system from sub-stance users, because it‟s there that they get a glimpse of how they could change. It‟s important to be able to go in Sisters and see Joe, who they were drinking with two months ago, now work-ing behind the counter. The biggest thing to keep in mind about drug or alco-hol addiction is that people are medicating a deeper pain, a bigger demon. Such was the case with Mo.Mo, who said, “When I come in f‟d-up, ask me what hap-pened, engage with me about what the next step has to be. Don‟t wrinkle your nose because I smell bad. That‟s the compassion. But also say, „You gotta get yourself to detox.‟ Talk to me about the mistakes and always offer tender mercy. Don‟t run or avoid saying the hard stuff, but do it with-out punishing me, See RECOVER pg. 13

Barriers to Finding

Work When Homeless

Jessica P Morrell w/ Genny Nelson June 4, 2007

One of the biggest myths is that homeless people don‟t want to work. I can name on one hand those who have fit that line during the last thirty years. Everyone else just wants the oppor-tunity to earn their own meals. That‟s why our customers said to Sandy and me when we founded Sisters, “Don‟t be about free food: do this with dignity; either make it cheap enough that I can pay for it on my income, or give me the chance to work for my meal.” Over and over, people have come to us years later to say, “Thank you for not robbing me of my digni-ty.” Your humanity doesn‟t go away just be-cause society doesn‟t see it. It angers me that we don‟t have enough places that afford people oppor-tunities after they get their lives together. While people have done some pretty inappropriate things in their lives, all they‟re saying is, “I‟m not proud of what I‟ve done, but I‟ve done my time.” This is not about feeling sorry for people or being a bleeding-heart liberal. It‟s about justice and human rights. When talking about obstacles to finding work,

all our narrators described that keeping up grooming was essential to obtaining work. Some also talked about how landing a job was impossible when you have bad or missing teeth, or other physical manifesta-tions of homelessness. Logan: Keep your ap-pearance up, and then peo-ple have to be motivated to want to go to work. I am a motivated kind of person. I want to work. Dale: Did you ever go look for a job with a back-pack on your back? Boss says, „What‟s your ad-dress?‟ [When he discovers he has none]: „Well, we‟ll call and let you know.‟ You are not getting the job when they see you are homeless; you got no tele-phone, you got a week bed [in a shel-ter]. If you got an address and some-place to leave your stuff, you can actu-ally wear your best clothes and go there without a backpack on your back and make your best presentation to the person. Like Dale, Steve believed that there was work available, but it required prac-tical solutions and incentive to find it. Steve: Do not tell me that there are no jobs. And if there are not, it is be-cause they are going to those who have an educa-tion or have the money or have connections or what have you. But it is impossi-ble to find a job when you do not have an address. If you have an address down-town, especially in Old

Town, any job you are look-ing for, you would hear, „Oh, okay, sure, we‟ll take an ap-plication,‟ and then it goes in the garbage can. And yes, I have worked in a number of jobs, odd jobs, under-the-table … but when they find out that you are from that class of people, well, then either they assume that you cannot do it and they let you go, or some convenient ex-cuse comes along. Sisters: So, if you were look-ing to ending individual homelessness and ending homelessness in general, what would make a real dif-ference? Steve: [For] those who are homeless now, I would sug-gest laundry services, cloth-ing services, and I do

See BARRIERS pg. 6

On Trying to Recover While

Homeless Jessica P Morrell w/

Genny Nelson July 10, 2007

Welcoming people under the influence, as long as they are not hurtful to themselves


Recognizing the “Soul Wound”

of War JP Gritton Feb 4, 2008

Therapist encourages veterans to eschew meds for “holistic” ap-proach.

For 36 years, Bob Chegal exhibited signs of Post Trau-matic Stress Disorder along with depres-sion, anxiety, and anger. Che-gal had a crum-bling marriage and a recurring dream. In it, a boy stood before Chegal, his mouth moving soundlessly. Though, in Chegal‟s words, “just a little boy,” the child was the first Viet Cong Che-gal ever killed. Chegal bounced between therapists, but could never seem to confront the demons that plagued him — if he hadn‟t been referred to Dr. Ed Tick, he might never have. Tick‟s unorthodox ap-proach to PTSD treatment is an amalgam of Western psy-chology and Eastern spiritual practice. War, argues Tick, is a wound to the soul itself. Together, Tick and Chegal journeyed to Saigon, a city that, Chegal says, hadn‟t changed much in 36 years. Sandbags, green uniforms and AK-47s everywhere,” Chegal remembers. “I‟d heard about flashbacks and thought, „Oh, what a crock.‟ But, man, these were real.” Though not always a pleasant experience, it was returning to Vietnam that allowed Che-gal to accept and forgive the country and himself. He can recall with perfect clarity standing on the steps of a Buddhist temple in South Vietnam and turning to find the boy who had haunted his

d r e a m s . “It was like our souls were talking,” says Chegal. “Does that make sense? He was thanking me for letting him g o h o m e . Which begs the question: Souls? According to Dr. Tick, Chegal‟s account is not unique; vets who undergo his treatment frequently complain of both haunted dreams and of losing souls themselves. His new book, War and the Soul (Quest Books, 2005), begins with an account of a man who has “lost” his soul at the Battle of Khe Sanh. “That we don‟t even really understand what a soul is shows some of the lost, trou-bled nature of our society,” says Tick. “If we had a ma-ture, sophisticated idea of a spiritual world, it would change everything.” Espe-cially, says Tick, the way we t r e a t o u r v e t e r a n s . Currently, the Department of Veterans Affairs com-bines individual and group psychotherapy with medica-tion in order, according to VA practitioner Miles McFall, to “suppress and sometimes cure PTSD symp-toms.” But, Tick says, that‟s not enough. “There‟s a difference be-tween managing PTSD and addres sing it,” says Tick, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychotherapy; the problem, he says, goes beyond war. “When the Western world made the transformation from the pagan to the early Christian era, it lost around 2,000 years of holistic heal-ing, as old, complex, and sophisticated as [the Chinese tradition],” says Tick. West-ern epistemology, for all that it offered, effectively fought a war against spirituality.

5 5/19/2010

has been in. He says he still has a lot of ground to cover. But for the first time in ages, after selling The Big Issue for a year, some kind of corner is b e i n g t u r n e d . The thing I grasp after the above encounter is so simple that it is dumb. A dumb thing that has avoided my understand-ing these near two dec-ades trying to help the homeless to help them-selves. And it is this: before the 11th of September 1991, for a homeless per-son to get money from the public they had to contort themselves into the most pathetic person imaginable. They had to appear ground down and broken. They had to sit and be beaten. They had to be uncared for. They had to look desperate. Imagine if a homeless person given to begging came up to you with a bright and encouraging smile on their face. And with a spring in their step. You might well look at them and think, „Well, he must have something go-ing for him.‟ It would not be a recipe for giving. It would be a recipe for re-fusing. It would be a reci-pe for ignoring. Only when the abjectness is foremost can you then be assured of pulling the strings of the public‟s collective good heart. The day after The Big Issue launched, the home-less who flocked to sell it had to immediately change their tack. They had to present themselves as „with a bounce‟. With a sense of their own worth. And even if they were beaten down See BEGGING pg 11

Freedom From Begging

(The Big Issue) John Bird

October 5, 2009

The warm handshake I receive in a small town in England makes up for the arguments, the bad blood that often flows when you are going about your work. The misunderstandings, the feeling that you are not be-ing taken seriously in your work, all disappear when a Big Issue vendor puts out his hand. He is a big man and his hand is big. He has a

beard and is well kempt. And he has a s m i l e . T h e phone calls of a few m i n u t e s b e f o r e about peo-

ple misunderstanding our work fall away. And are made insignificant. For a moment, just a moment, I begin to understand what it might be to be a person who buys The Big Issue. And encounter the warmth and optimism of people who have decided to fight back. To not stay down be-cause they were trodden on and pushed. Who have pre-sented themselves to the world in order to make their own money and transform their lives. And in that mo-ment I begin to understand something that I have not understood over these 18 years. The Big Issue ven-dor‟s encouraging, firm hand and look was like a good blast of humanity. Like a plus out of a minus. We talk about where he is staying. He describes the hostel he is in and says that it is probably the best one he


Finding a Firm Foundation

LARRY ANDERSON

After graduating from the U of U, things seemed to be going good. I was doing what I had wanted to do for many years. Teaching college, working in the Patent Office and creating data-base software. But even with all the success, the money, the status, etc., I felt empty inside, like I was missing something. I would go out with col-leagues and friends to relax and try to enjoy my-self, have a few drinks, blow off some steam and live it up a bit. The relief only lasting a little while, then I needed something else. The cycle of coping with life’s pressures by drinking alcohol began to spin out of control and it wasn’t long before I was looking for something stronger and quicker to numb me. Just a little bit of cocaine to get me going wouldn’t seem to hurt, but there was never enough. Finally I turned to heroin to escape my misery, to feel nothing at all. I was in a down-ward spiral, fed by my addictions, which lead to poor performance at work, ending in deeper and deeper depression. After 30 years of the "slow fade" my colleagues seen me as a empty shell of a man who was no longer valuable to anybody. I was rightfully let go. I heard of the Salt Lake City Mission’s Second Chance Ranch and Christian Recovery Program. I now had to face facts. After two failed marriages, overdosing four times, four strokes and going through seven rehab centers, I was destitute then. Now, I was willing to do whatever it took to change. I joined the program and soon felt like I was with family. A family that helps and encour-ages each other, one that loves everyone uncondi-

Please buy your

Street News from

BADGED VENDORS ONLY!

tionally. I began to feel free to share that I was abused as a child and felt ashamed of it. I listened to the words of Jesus, the Bible, godly teachers and counseling, then reality set in. There was real hope and freedom. My

way of thinking was changing into confidence in the One and His word and best yet HE loves me just the way I am. God was showing me His grace by giving His own Son to die for my sin. After receiving Jesus into my heart I was no longer concerned with keeping up with the world’s idea of suc-cess. It set me free to accept my-self and others just the way they are. I learned how to surrender it all to the living God and learned real forgiveness, patience, perse-verance, and to how to put off the shame of what had been done to me and what I had done. I was a new creation with purpose, joy and confidence in my God. Since completing the Second Chance Ranch, I’ve stayed in contact with those who know the Lord and taught me truth. I began attending a Bible teaching church, serving in the fellowship and leading a recovery group as time went on. It’s been three years since I was at the ranch, but I thank God for it everyday. Today I’m working with the same software designers I had before. Times still get tough, stress still comes, but now I have someone real to turn to and friends who speak the truth, even when it hurts. I now know why I’m on this Earth. To serve the one true God by serving others. Praise God! –

6 5/19/2010 SALT LAKE STREET NEWS

BARRIERS pg. 4 not mean clothing from the 1920s, I mean, clothing that is appropriate for a job. Mack explained if there are jobs available, they are for low wages, which makes ending their cycle of homelessness impossible . Mack: I don’t want to spend the rest of my life at six dollars an hour. I can’t do nothing with my life. I’d rather walk around on the streets, eat out here and there and have some time to my-self and work a day a week than to get out there and kill myself and have nothing. Worry about losing your job, trying to main-tain a roof over your head, from that kind of money? I don’t even know how people pay rent for that kind of money. Do you? Un-less you live at home with your folks. Trevor explained that some days he chose to miss work in o r d e r t o g e t c l e a n . Trevor: The shower times are horrible. I mean you can take a shower at 7:30 in the morning, but you know what? If you are not at day labor at 5:30 in the morning you are not going to go out. I would suggest an evening shower, like 7 or something like that, or something bright and ear-ly in the morning, four o’clock, or 4:30. If I had a roof over my head and a place I could shower, I think I could become a produc-tive member of society. It is a matter of just having a place to lay down at the end of the day. Voices from the Street: Truths About Homelessness from Sisters of The Road, by Jessica P. Mor-rell, is available in soft and hard-cover and can be ordered online w w w . g r a y s u n s h i n e . c o mo r www.sistersoftheroad.org

The Sonata of the Lucky Homeless by Susan Osterman Man standing catatonic Lace and barbarism Shopping bag man No longer tried to be charming The emphasis is on survival No looks or charm Who can charm rich tourists He says Or rich New Yorkers The street is my home Not my mating ground First dates are a luxury Went right by me I didn’t even notice it Let alone regret or miss it My family didn’t bother To put me in an institution Or was I deinstitutionalized Is that like depersonalized All these big words I’m entirely dependent On the kindness of strangers

GRAY

Street Sense, USA

David Harris

February 4, 2008

The colors are before your eyes – the violent startling sap-phire of cloudless winter sky; crystal white of fresh–fallen snow, pastel pinks and limes of the houses in your neighborhood chill–borne flush on the cheeks of passers-by yet in the milky lens of your vision all you perceive are shades of gray – you dwell in a world of shadow. Shouts and laughter of strangers who live in technicolor are muffled to your

ears as your world blurs behind a sheen of tears. Gray is the color of life in a cloudbank –

your hands reach and grope for shapes of sustenance but can only grasp the substance of shad-ows and you starve, fresh juicy fruit inches from your lips. Your ragged fingernails claw at your eyes to scrape away cobwebs and cataracts they blind you to the color around you; your effort fails, more tears drip to your feet staining the ground the grimy gray of week–old snow.

NEED HELP

FINDING HELP?

2-1-1

Information & Referral

801-978-3333

5/19/2010

Broken Dreams

As children bring their broken toys

with tears for us to mend,

I brought my broken dreams to

God because He was my friend!

But then instead

of leaving Him in peace to work alone,

I hung around and tried to help

with ways that were my own.

At last I snatched

them back and cried, "How can you be so

slow?" "My child," He said "What could I do?

You never did let go."

Author Unknown


3443 S West Temple SLC, UT -84115

801-467-4710

PLACE YOUR

ADDS HERE

7

The Street Gives and

Takes Anja Keglevic May 19, 2008

Years ago she opted for a life on the street. Ekes out a living being one of few women among many men. In some moments it feels still like freedom, but other times she feels very tired. Most of all, now in the win-ter she feels the cold in her almost fifty year old body.

Maria lives on the street. 12 years ago she lost her job. She was being mobbed at work to the extent that “there were days when in the evening, as soon as I closed the door behind me, I cried for 2 hours”. Even-tually she couldn’t take it anymore and quit her job. She looked for help and an open ear in psychiatric treatment, but “what I got were medications, which created feelings of happi-ness, when I was not happy really.”

After two months she is discharged from the hospi-tal and attempts to take control of her life again. She wants justice and sues her former employer. The court case drags on for 3 years. Even her time in psychiatric treatment be-comes a topic in the legal proceedings; she feels the humiliations never end. In the end the case is thrown out and she hasn’t got the financial means to launch an appeal. She decides “if society does not want me, then I am not going to stay here”.

She leaves the community where she was living, be-cause there was neither work nor help available. She leaves the small ram-shackle cottage, the only thing left to her by her late mother, she leaves her des-potic father, who does not give a toss about his daughter. And she simply sets off.

“I know it sounds crazy, and it is frequently every-thing but easy, but by liv-ing on the street I start-ed self-therapy.”

During the long ram-blings she thinks a lot and puts a lot of things into per-spective. In the wake of the regular exercise in the open not only her soul slowly recovers but her body also gathers strength. She eats regularly again, as she needs strength to continue walking. Of course it is tough. No money, no safe place to sleep, no people to trust, no shoulder to rest your head on. Sometimes strangers give her money for a meal.

Frequently she has scrounged in bins at the back of supermarkets for food. Sometimes she pre-fers that to going to one of the homeless shelters. That is often an ordeal for wom-en, being viewed as fair game by vulgar men with no sense of personal space. Many men turn aggressive if you don’t play along. Particularly those who are drunk tend to as-sault you.

She fights back, some-times at the top of her voice, preferably by ignor-ing them. Not all are like

8 SALT LAKE STREET NEWS 5/19/2010

this, but if, like many of the other women, you “compromise” , you quickly become an out-cast. Even at the margins of society it is effectively every man for himself. Sometimes, especially now in the winter, she longs for a “home“, or at least a place to sleep of her own, a place for which she doesn’t need to fight every night, a place where she is not afraid.

Maybe just a shed or a tiny single room some-where. But, then again, she is afraid that even such elements of an “ordered” life will mean responsibilities she can`t cope with. “I like doing things for other people, but if I am obliged to do it, I am not sure I can do it regularly”. She thinks it’s sad that not every human being is guaranteed the bare necessities of life. Maria lives on the street. For a long time already. And the road “back” be-c o m e s l o n g e r with every step.

9 5/19/2010

What Happens at

the 4th Street Clinic?

Pam Cordray January 6, 2009

Sometime back I talked with Jenifer who is the Communications Direc-tor for the 4th Street Clinic to understand what is pro-vided at the Clinic. I found out all the patients that are served there are those with-out stable housing from the Salt Lake City area. The 4th Street Clinic provides a medical home without charge. A medical home is where all primary care needs are met. The patient can see a family practition-er, and under the same roof mental health services are available. They have an onsite pharmacy where all prescriptions are filled free of charge. It is an integrat-ed care system. The idea is to come to one of the phy-sicians at the Clinic to get a proper diagnosis, as well as get needed peripheral and follow-up.

Hopefully, this will help prevent people from having to go to the Emergency Room. When people are sick and do not have insur-ance or any money the ER is where they usually end up. The ER is a very costly and ineffective way to take care of chronic illnesses. For example, if someone

has a problem with their diabetes they go to the ER. The hospital may stabilize the condition for a day or for that time frame only. Then the hospital doesn’t offer any follow up ser-vices. We’re talking about diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and other chronic illnesses where follow- up care is very much needed. Medication may also need to be altered and brought under control with a pri-mary care provider which is offered without charge. Right now, there are some patients who have standing daily appointments be-cause that’s how sick they are.

In the “Care Coordina-tion Office” the goal of the 4th Street Clinic is to bring attention to the immediate medical needs that are pre-sented like the flu, a bro-ken bone, chest pains, and shortness of breath etc. The secondary goal is to keep people out of the ER and provide them with cost effective ongoing primary care. Jenifer said, “This works. People are able to get well and they start feel-ing better and their strength is built up and their symptoms get under control which produces in some, a reduction in sei-zures, hypertension and ER visits. Then they are able to get to job training or get some education or go to an interview. We help them if they need dental work. Some of the patients need their teeth fixed. If they have rotting teeth and need dental work

the Clinic will try to help get there teeth fixed so they are able to smile and go to a job interview.”

The 4th Street Clinic also makes recommendations for housing with inter-agencies working for hous-ing the chronically home-less; also the Clinic helps determine who goes into housing. The Clinic helps with screening for eligibil-ity for Social Security Dis-ability, Medicaid or Medi-care for those who are in that situation and availabil-ity. She said that most of the chronic homeless do not live to be much over 65 years old.

The 4th Street Clinic is

very integrated and works with all the other resources in the community to serve those who frequent its fa-cility. “We have patients who come in with 3 or 4 debilitating diseases going on with them. For exam-ple, they will have asthma, hypertension, high choles-terol, diabetes, coupled w/drug addiction and alcohol-

ism, coupled with mental illness. People are hurting and they want to feel bet-ter so they self-medicate which leads to addiction, which leads to homeless-ness, which leads to men-tal illness. Here at the 4th Street Clinic we are able to help them with all their issues as long as they are willing to be helped. Mental health is a big is-sue, along with no insur-ance and financial help they are cut off from all services that can help them. When people are released from prisons or jails they are cut off from very expensive medica-tions. Mental health is-sues are treatable with ongoing help, medication, and talking with someone on a regular basis. People are able to live productive

and satisfying lives. Chronic health issues can and does cause homeless-ness.”

There is now an epi-

See 4th Street pg 12


"We have to know how to listen to our HEART... The MIND can lie, but the HEART never lies."

Illion Merculieff

10 5/19/2010

of the police during the anti-war demonstrations in Lin-coln Park. I knew folks who had been beat up by the police and folks who had been rescued by them. I knew about the opera, thea-ters, Chicago Symphony, the churches, blues joints, jazz joints, Chicago Art Institute, other museums and loved them all. I went to public school, earned my teaching degree, taught public school, and sent my young boys to public school. In other words, tell me about city life, and I‟ve been there, done that, in Chicago.

This time, I was coming back to new turf, to learn about StreetWise. We toured their facility, met with the executive director, the editor and a board member. We enjoyed lunch together and shared Chica-go stories. The second day there I met Greg Pritchard, coordinator of the vendors. He shared his story with me, and I tell it here with his permission, because I hope someone will begin to understand what vendors are made of and how and why they are who they are. Greg grew up in Chicago. He had a good, loving fami-ly and eventually his grand-mother left him the family house. Somewhere in his youth he took the wrong path and made poor choic-

he bought all the newspa-pers, prepared a resume, and answered ads.

His spirits were lifted as he scheduled six inter-views. Each interview fol-lowed the same pattern. He was cheerfully greeted and led to believe he had a real chance at the job that

was advertised. Then when they got to the paper work and the potential employer noted that Greg„s last address was the state penitentiary, the in-terview abruptly end-

ed. Greg had tears in his eyes as he told me his sto-ry. “Ruth, it took the air right out of me when an interview was going well and as soon as they knew my last address, the inter-view was over.”

Another task facing Greg (and most released folks after serving time) was getting appropriate ID documents. The state had “lost his ID.” He went to the Secretary of State Of-fice, stood in line two hours, and was told they couldn‟t help him. His rec-ords were “lost” and may-be in six months they‟d be able to establish ID cre-dentials if he “had a per-manent address.” No, not a shelter.

See GREG pg 12.

Greg’s story: Down and Out and Back Again

Ruth Kovacs July 2, 2007

Chicago is my first home. That‟s where I was born in 1932 (yes, during the Great Depression) and that‟s where I stayed until I was past 30. Since then, I‟ve gone back at least once a year. I have family and many friends there. It was my first city in the “Hungry Neighbors” book project. I knew about the rich and the poor folks in the Windy City, and the Daley political machine, the struggles with unions, the evolution of public education and more. It was easy for me to get anywhere. I had friends who would give me rides and I knew the bus, El and subway routes.

But I didn‟t know about StreetWise, (the street newspaper) until about five years ago when I became interested in street newspa-pers. I knew about skid row and the projects, and the poverty. I had been on wel-fare and knew about the social services, and I had enjoyed a few good paying jobs and knew about life in the fast lane. But I didn‟t know about homelessness, or sleeping in the train sta-tion. I knew about the vio-lence of some police as well as the kindness of the men in blue. I had seen the force

es. He was drug addicted and involved in the crimes of use, possession and theft that usu-ally go with that lifestyle.

At the age of 30, he was incarcerated for two and a half years for a non-violent crime. He served two years (90 days in solitary) at the state penitentiary in Mount S t e r l i n g , Ill. In 1998 he was re-leased with $20. His house was gone be-cause he had been unable to pay taxes. His address was a shelter. He had just one friend. His fami-ly and other old friends didn‟t want anything to do with him because he had hurt them all by the bad actions and atti-tudes of his years of drug abuse. Actually, he had dried out in the two years in jail. Not because of any rehab program, not because he couldn‟t make any old con-nections to buy drugs, but because he had hit bottom. Greg was physically and emotionally drained. He had spent a lot of time looking at his life and the choices he had foolishly made. He was determined to win back his family and friends, and most of all his self-respect. The last two weeks of prison pro-vided a release program that advised him to tell the truth when starting a new life. So


11 5/19/2010

public were offered an alter-native response to home-lessness. They could see and help support a homelessness that could be overcome. That there were home-less people who would not hang around for the gener-osity of strangers but would work their way out of the bad and make their way to-wards the good. Even if, as said, the good was thin and un-nurtured, at least it could be encouraged and grown. That is what I did not under-stand. That we created an appetite among the public, or in enough of them, to say, “Yes, let‟s give this fighter support.” As I walked away from the vendor with the big hand and warm handshake, I could see therefore what an encouraging symbol of new possibilities could be seen; simply by engaging and buying from a Big Is-sue vendor. But then I also began to understand the people who formerly I did not understand, the people who said that Big Issue ven-dors were only putting on a show when they sold. It was just another piece of con-ning. And that they re-mained defeated and beaten but now with an ability to put a better face on it. Now I could see that in a way we were encouraging homeless people to be like other people. And that is, „get on with your job, how-ever hard it is.‟ Trouble in your life? Tough; but some-one still has to drive the bus. And then I understood, this late in the day, that yes, it was not wrong to get homeless people, like the rest of us, to put a good face on trouble. And that that was a possible way of mak-ing changes. Grinning and bearing it, rather than falling

And I take it. I try and give them the paper and they say, „Sell it to someone else.‟” I said: “I know. Some people have been do-ing that since the beginning. They don‟t want the paper. They have a choice.” He said: “Oh, I know they have a choice. But think, at the point you‟ve got me work-ing for a living. Getting my-self together, someone is „treating‟ me. Is giving me a gift. Imagine how many more papers you would sell. And how many more people you could help if they took the paper.” I shook his hand and rushed for the London train. He was right. We did a survey once. In spite of having good sales year in and year out, a vast amount of money was going on to the streets in terms of gifts and dona-tions. I was not against that. How could I be? But it did occur to me: if we had more money from more paper sales then we could do more to help the homeless to help them-selves. But don‟t knock the „drops‟, as they are called, I mused. Just find a way of converting the non-readers into readers. And that, I reasoned, was the best thing we could do in our 19th year. Push up the value of the paper. Load it down with value. Saturate it with value. So that those reluctant readers but great supporters of our vendors could help us even more to help the homeless to help t h e m s e l v e s . I do love birthdays. But this 18th one has been one big „thinking‟ one. So keep thinking. Keep reading. Keep supporting. And any ideas about converting sup-porters into readers would be greatly appreciated.

to pieces and staying in piec-es Yes! Life is like that. And we were giving the homeless the chance to find the steel to cope, even if they did not have much of it. But believ-ing that if you can get through without giving up, it increases the chances of get-ting out of the grief.. This was definitely my learning day. One of those days when thoughts and so-lutions drop into your head and your understanding heads upwards. Yes, by real-

izing that we were b r i n g i n g h o m e l e s s people to the market-place to earn their own money. And to gain in self-esteem, it

always involved behaving in the market place as if you had a good product. And you were good and pleased to sell it. I walked round the small town and on walking back to the station encoun-tered the same vendor. He was doing his selling and I didn‟t want to stop him earn-ing his living. But he called m e o v e r . I w e n t . And then he shocked me. He said, “You know, of course, that The Big Issue gets more support than you think it does.” I looked at him and thought, „Well, thank you for the earlier in-sight. But don‟t start telling me my job and what is and what is not The Big Issue.‟ So I said, “Well, I‟m glad to hear that.” I put my hand out to shake a goodbye, desirous of getting the next London train. But he stood firm. He said: “People come and give me money.


FREEDOM pg 5 they were coming back from it all. Instead of being victims in the struggle to gain control of the damage done to them in their lives, they had to come back as victors. Of course, you could still see some former beggars selling The Big Issue with a commitment to putting forward the most compel-ling sense of failure they could muster. But on the whole, many and most homeless sellers could see that the public were set alight by one thing. They were set alight by the sight of homeless people fighting back. Standing up and going for it. Not seem-ing to be defeated. It was as if suddenly the psychol-ogy of the homeless had to change overnight in order to get public support.

Change it did, and sup-port they got. The public flooded in to take, rip and grab those Big Issues, of-ten causing the homeless to feel that Christmas had come early. And often. So The Big Issue added to homeless people‟s bow another string or two. And though they may still be broken and in dire need, the public‟s engaging en-couragement helped make a solution seem possible. One of the worst things about having to resort to begging is that you have to present the whole of your life as a negative. And that is a pretty bad state and place to be in. It means that you cannot feel en-couraged or positive about little things that you do. All you can rely upon is the way the public will give to the broken. But The Big Issue changed that equation. Suddenly the

12 SALT LAKE STREET NEWS

SOUL pg 5 verse.‖ According to Tick, modern war — in its often indiscriminate and unmiti-gated brutality — is a natu-ral extension of a soulless worldview. War‘s original function, as a means of defense and a rite of passage, have been compromised by the swap-ping of ―spirituality for power, control, and domina-tion.‖ Tick invites participants to invoke the people who haunt their dreams. ―The dead in dreams want some-thing,‖ he says. Veterans under Tick‘s care have also performed restorative and philanthropic work; in 2004, Bob Chegal and others returned to Vi-etnam to build a school. Since his visits, his night-mares have stopped. Tick has recently received a grant to conduct a case study and obtain empirical data in or-der to substantiate the effi-cacy of his treatment. ―Beyond my work with veterans, I want to bring back the concept of the soul to this society,‖ says Tick. Doing so, he says, could c h a n g e t h e w o r l d .

5/19/2010

Never , Never, Never, Never

Give Up! Winston Churchill

GREG pg 10 maybe even a few papers to sell. Even in his most irra-tional condition, he could feel vibes of compassion from the vendors. But it was-n‘t important. His priority was getting a fix. But the vendors finally got to him. They continued to encourage him to try to sell papers. He went to the orientation and heard the stories of men and women who had been ―around the block more times than he had‖ and now were finding their way back to sobriety and family. He was given food and a wel-come community that were really ―a bunch of do-gooders who believed in their program.‖ ―I told myself ‗this is a good angle to play‘ for a while. At least it may help me get my fix and maybe even a few dollars for a place to flop now and then. I can play this game of good ven-dor.‖ Winter months in Chi-cago are cold. Greg took his first papers and went to his favorite corner. As soon as he sold a few papers, he found his connection and headed to the $4-a-day room. He stayed high until morn-ing. The place was three floors of the depths of de-pression. But now he had a new routine and it worked fine

for a while. One day he realized this life was killing him and he, for some unexplaina-ble reason, wanted to live. He found himself at a re-hab service center crying, ―Help me.‖ But the wait would be 90 days and 400 people were on the list ahead of him. The lady said, ―Call me in 30 days.‖ He couldn‘t wait. He called in two weeks, then in 3 days, then every day. ―So actually one month, two weeks 3 days and two hours later the lady put his name in front of 175 folks,‖ and he en-tered the 26-day program. After detox, Greg knew he had to do more than sell papers. The ven-dors knew him as a bully — but once he started re-ally working with them, he became part of the ven-dor family. He spent all his time that he wasn‘t selling papers at the com-puter. He learned a lot about addiction and the prison system and the welfare system and food banks, and more. He shared what he learned with other vendors and encouraged them and helped them get their sales up and raise their personal goals and standard of liv-ing. After a time he be-came vendor coordinator and has introduced pro-grams for the vendors. They now have the oppor-tunity to learn to read, use the computer, send and receive emails so they can re-connect with friends and family and pursue a life off the streets. At a vendor meeting, the day after our conver-sation, I saw Greg in ac-tion with folks. He was fantastic. He is socially aware, street smart and

works constantly to share himself with those who are struggling to start over. Greg learned the hard way. He is grateful, as he says, to ―have it together,‖ and endeavors to pay the community back for getting him through his crisis peri-od. We talked about many things. We shared our poet-ry. We are friends 4th Street pg 9 demic of homelessness that has become generational as it is passed down from one generation to the other, with whole generations living on the streets. In Salt Lake City there will be 15,500 who will experience being home-less through out the year. There are 3500 – 4000 peo-ple during the night. There were 55 people who died from preventable illnesses in 2007. The average age is 48 and life expectancy in Utah is 72. To make an appoint-ment at the 4th Street Clinic call between 8:00 to 8:30 in the morning at 801-364-0058. If you can‘t call in between those times, still call in and make the appoint-ment for the next day or they may ask you to call back the next day. Any health care concerns you may have, any prescription refills you may need, you will need to see a physician. Please bring as much medical history as you can; i.e. lab tests, prescrip-tion bottles, anything you have available pertaining to your medical condition.

13 5/19/2010

feelings, to hide yourself. Sisters: So, you kicked it when you got back? Ivan: Hardest thing I ever had to do. Many narrators talked about a lifetime burden of emotional trauma from abu-sive or unstable childhoods. They also described using drugs or alcohol to cope with the death of a loved one, a separation or divorce, or los-ing custody of their children. Donald: I sort of felt self-destructive. I went into self-destruct mode when I got divorced and so I really did not care that much about los-ing it all. And so almost may-be subconsciously I was do-i n g i t o n p u r p o se .

RECOVER pg. 4 ridiculing me, or making me feel l e s s - t h a n . ” Many home-less people de-velop an addic-tion after losing their housing. Following the harsh and daily grind of home-lessness, they turn to alcohol or drugs for solace or to self- medicate untreat-ed physical and mental pain. C h a d : I know that some people, when they start off be-ing homeless, they are really cool people, but after a while when you are homeless, you got to have some kind of re-lease, you know, and a lot of it comes from alcohol or drugs. It takes the edge off. No matter which came first, it is clear that addic-tion complicates a per-son’s daily life. It often prevents them from hold-ing down a job and an apartment, taking care of their hygiene and health, or maintaining healthy relationships. The loss of these greatly increases a person’s risk of becoming homeless. Ivan started using her-oin while in the service. Ivan: [To] forget about things that happened over there, to hide your


Recovery was a frequent topic in our interviews—the need to begin recovery, a person’s shaky newfound recovery, or a person’s long-term recovery. As one re-covering heroin addict ex-plained, “You have to get well before you can do any-thing.” It was especially heartening to talk with men and women who had long since left their addictions behind and could look back with perspective and relief that they were no longer trapped in their addiction. Ignacio: I don’t look at me going back to drug use again. I had enough of that. If anybody beat me up as bad as I did myself, I’d kill them if they did the stuff to me that I did to myself. We also heard about many different paths to re-covery. Many belonged to twelve-step programs or had gone through programs offered through social ser-vice agencies. One veteran who had been sober for seventeen years spends much of his time volunteer-ing because he believes in keeping busy as a key to

sobriety. Dennis: If you want to stay away from the drugs and whatever the case may be, you want to change your life. Find something to occupy your time. What is clear is that addiction has enormous consequences. Paul, 54, had a particularly apt de-scription of heroin addic-tion. Paul: It’s like an alco-holic. Some people can drink and they don’t ever get to be an alcoholic. And some people do. But most of the people that use heroin do get addict-ed. Most everybody uses it for the same reason. It’s different from what peo-ple think. It’s because it makes you feel good. That’s why you like it. It’s the best feeling you ever had. You can’t hardly de-scribe it. Well, you can’t really if somebody’s never done it. But it becomes everything. After awhile, it’s your wife, your life, and it won’t leave you alone.

Advertise Right Here

Bottom pg.3 They all come bundled with denial. Denial is the initial response to any bad news, and it has many shifty strategies for main-taining itself. But with chemical dependency, de-nial is compounded by the action of the drug on the brain itself and becomes an intrinsic feature of the addicted person’s thinking. The mind of each individ-ual addict will develop v a r i o u s strategies to c o n v i n c e itself that what is happen-ing is manageable and that, if there are problems, they are external. It’s your fault or the world’s, but it’s not mine. The lucky — or blessed — ones hit bottom. They come to a point so low that all these defenses quit working. Reality smacks them in the face. Con-cerned family or friends can help raise the bottom by setting limits. The courts can intervene. In some cases, a few nights sleeping on the sidewalk — and waking up cold in the morning with the side-walk grit in your face and hair — can be enough to convince an addict he or she needs help. Even then, pride, in its weird way, can keep them out. These men on the sidewalk can con-jure lots of reasons to keep on using. Hitting bottom is a shifty, slippery, unpredict-

able thing at best. People of all classes struggle with it, not just the poor. But I believe that here again is another place where poverty compli-cates things. Poverty skews the bottom. If you are raised to believe everyone goes to jail at one time or another, as it seems in many poor communities, then jail becomes a rite of passage rather than a conse-quence. If you have learned to do without, you’d better handle situa-tions like hunger or homelessness. If society mocks your poverty and tells you that you count for nothing from the day of your birth, then you might expect nothing. And when nothing comes, it is only a matter of course, not of your use. None of this is necessarily true for anyone raised in poverty, but I have seen this process at work, time and again Denial is still denial, rich or poor. There are plenty of former high roll-ers sleeping on sidewalks, too. But poverty compli-cates the process of hit-ting bottom simply be-cause the low-income addict is so close to the bottom to begin with. These men passed out on the sidewalk might have a long way yet to travel. Michael Henson is a chemical addictions coun-selor and writes a month-ly column on the relation-ship between poverty and addition.


EMOTION pg. 3 where and just sit, and never wake up again. When skilled and appropriate assistance is provided, the re-sults can be effective. Jennifer: [I have problems

with] depres-sion and an-ger , but kind of watch what you do, and you are not as apt to have

anger things flash out at people like I have… I have got an aw-ful lot out of my therapist. She has got one-on-one with me and she also is my group leader. Although almost a third of our narrators said they suffered from a mental illness, only four-teen percent reported social security payments as a source of income. Why isn’t a larger per-centage receiving payments: the challenge of applying for ser-vices, lack of formal diagnosis, incorrect self-diagnosis, or some combination of factors? The challenges faced by those experiencing homelessness make difficult or even impossi-ble those tasks most of society sees as routine. The difficulty of escaping homelessness conflicts with the desire to escape. Anxi-ety, frustration, depression, and other negative emotional and mental states are formidable enemies added to existing ob-stacles. Kevin: You are already under pressure here. When you are homeless like that, and it is a

day-to-day thing about how you are going to make this appointment or get your clothes washed, or just it is a constant battle to try to keep your head above water and stay clean. And then, add to that the lack of hous-ing and the places to sleep outside all are gone, you know, all those murders and all the crack and the violence on the streets, it is just, you know, it is hard. No wonder some of those people drink and do drugs, you know? People think, ‘Why don’t they just get out of it.’ Well, until you have experienced it, you cannot really judge it. It is like an evil monster. Somehow when you be-come homeless, it does something to your psyche, no matter how strong you are, it just does something to you that, the longer you are there the harder it is to get away from it. I wish I could explain it. It is be-yond words, but it is real, I know it is real.. Voices from the Street: Truths About Homelessness from Sisters Of The Road, by Jessica P. Morrell, is available in soft and hard-cover and can be ordered o n l i n e www.graysunshine.com For more information about Sisters Of The Road, please visit: www.sistersoftheroad.org.

Your Add

Could Go

Here

5/19/2010 KATRINA pg 1 The apartment complex, Fox Pointe management where Curtis had been living 2.5 years decided not to renew his lease. They notified him Jan-uary 17th, 2008 that he had to be out of there the end of the month. This brought him back to the Mission where he got help from Pastor Wilson in finding some answers to his problems. First, Housing Authority was required to provide a contract stating how much money was required for rent and a list of apartments to help his search in looking for them. With the Pastors help, Curtis was able to get this information. Due to lack of credit references and no financial assistance he ran into a lot of NO’S because of

not having appropriate credentials. Time was r u n n i n g out—he was evicted and

needed somewhere to live. He and housing authority asked Fox Pointe Management for more time. Housing Authori-ty sent them 2 checks for rent for February and March. But Fox Pointe Management would not accept the checks. On March 4th, 2008 he was officially asked to leave and made to leave all his house-hold belongings behind. In-cluding furniture items which were donated to him through R.C. Willey’s along with other generous companies in the valley, when the people from New Orleans were staying at Camp Williams waiting to be placed into housing. Curtis found help in picking up his furniture and things and a place to store them, but the truck broke down and he would have to wait a few days

before he could pick them up. He notified the manager at Fox Pointe what was going on with the truck and he’d be able to pick up is belongings in a few days. Management agreed! When the day came to go pick up his stuff he was served with papers for aban-donment of property and $2,000 back rent. They would not let him come and get his things. Curtis said, this going back and forth with property, rent, and he trying to find an apartment went on approximately four months. But he said, that through prayer, and faith he was able to keep going. Curtis became homeless during this process. Trying to deal with the homeless situa-tion, the housing authority, having to find his own apart-ment, and pressure from Fox Pointe Management (for rent & storage) and not having transportation, no money, and he was expected to be at ap-pointments everyday and Fox Pointe had him in court once a week, he said, that he was living in a high stress level of consistently, but his faith kept him going. Then all of a sudden, eve-rything started falling into place. Housing Authority found him an apartment, the Mission led him to Legal Aide, which helped him with his legal situation—now Fox Pointe Management has agreed to cooperate and he’s getting his personal belong-ings back. He says his credit has been established and is not in disarray anymore. Cur-tis is getting job assistance from his case worker at Hous-ing Authority to help him become self-

sufficient. Now, he is in his own apartment and has his furniture and personal belong-ings back.

Any Katrina Evacuee’s having any problems with the knowledge of your FEMA STATUS can call these phone

#’s 1-800-462-9029 and

1-800-829-1040 IRS General Questions. Make sure you have your FEMA # with you.

head “no.” They pause to smile at each other, before she turns around saying, “It’s just a really good time for us right now.”

The new apartment, under construction in West Rogers Park, is completely handicap-accessible—all of the fixtures are lower, allowing Lydia to do more by herself without having to ask for assistance. The dream became reality thanks to Access Living’s Lauren Bean, the Housing Outreach Coordinator; Bree Burkett with Design at Home; Jeremy Burkett, her hus-band, at Chicago Graystone; and Marty Cerny, also with Chicago Graystone. “All of the people involved with helping us…I could win the lottery and give all of the money to them, and it still wouldn’t approach how thankful I am,” Lydia beamed, “I love them…they don’t even know.”

When they’re not enjoying their new residence, they can still be found working hard sell-ing the latest issue of Street-Wise. Lydia’s location is at the Dunkin’ Donuts at 20 E. Chica-go, where she is kept safe in the company of her Tony until he moves to his own location—the Whole Foods on Huron—before t h e m o r n i n g r u s h . StreetWise is proud of the couple’s teamwork, dedication, and persistence. Congratulations on the new home!


VENDOR pg 2 own. Due to poor credit, the couple was ineligible for many types of housing that others enjoy. For 3 years, they called a hotel home—for $50 a day. Anthony sighs re-calling the stress of living with a constant financial drain, “it put us under a tre-mendous amount of reassure to go out and be successful each and every single day, just to pay the rent, let alone food.”

Now the happy couple can truly say that their housing problems have come to an end—through Access Living, Chicago Graystone, and De-sign at Home, the couple will have a new apartment in the construction phases right now. “We are definitely start-ing over, and this is all I’ve been thinking about for the last few weeks, looking at the floor plans,” Lydia ex-claimed, her words distorted by a gigantic grin. She added, “I cannot wait to move. I’m looking forward to touching up the place with decorations, having a place to call ours, and then…just enjoying our space. We can cook our own food, and I just want to invite everybody I know over. Eve-rybody’s invited…come help us celebrate!” She spies An-thony smiling and shaking his

15


PO Box 418 American Fork, UT 84003

office: (801)763-6121 cell: (801)592-9943

[email protected]

Help Deter Panhandling With Honest Opportunities

To allow those less fortunate to

become paid vendors of

Salt Lake Street News

3443 S West Temple SLC, UT 84115

801-467-4710

1391 S 300 W-SLC, UT 84115-84102

801-486-5643

705 S 700 E– SLC, UT 84102

801-537-1433

Our Mission Life of a Salt Lake Street News is a nonprofit...

Documents

Transcript of Our Mission Life of a Salt Lake Street News is a nonprofit...