homeless face daunting obstacles in struggle for second chance _ affect magazine

2/17/2015 Homeless Face Daunting Obstacles in Struggle for Second Chance | Affect Magazine

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EXAMINATIONBY HELAINA HOVITZ ON FEBRUARY 1, 2015

Photo by Chris Makarsky

Homeless Face Daunting Obstacles in Struggle for Second Chance

The idea of a second chance is ingrained in our DNA. Its fair. Its expected. Its the right thing.

But for those who are homeless, second chances rarely come, and the obstacles that come with them are shocking.

To nd out what its really like, Aect Magazine spoke in depth with three men who have been cast out on the

streets. Their struggles were substantial, and their lives tell the story in a way that statistics and generalities never

could.

For Steven Thomas, 60, the eight-year struggle to secure a job and a place to live is ongoing. Whats perhaps most

mind-blowing of all is that Thomas is a well-known homeless advocate who has spoken on behalf of the National

Coalition for the Homeless on networks like CNN.

Thomass drug addiction rst landed him on the streets in 2005. He was so horried by the conditions of the

overcrowded shelters in Washington, D.Cone held 300 people, another, 1,600that he chose to make a home on a

park bench on Pennsylvania Avenue. For eighteen months, Thomas would spend his mornings waiting in line for

hours outside of a shelter in order to take a ve-minute shower and get ready for job fairs and talks. During that

time, he sent in a total of over 200 applications. Thomas had no criminal record or mental illness, but he did have

previous job experience under his belt. Because he qualied for food stamps, he was also given a phone, but calls

from prospective employers never came.

You do everything humanly possibly to nd a job, you go to every job fair, you try to feed yourself. People treat you

horribly on the streets, he said. Eventually, people give up. Sometimes, it takes people a while to snap, sometimes

they snap in 30 days. They start talking to themselves, they start thinking about how to die.

Thompson refused to give up, no matter how dangerous living on the streets became. On one particularly cold day

in 2007, hope came in the form of a United Healthcare van. One of the men inside picked him up out of the bushes

and asked if he needed help.

Nobody had asked me that a day in my life. He gave me a number and I went into a program for four years, got

sober, and lived in an SRO [single room occupancy], he said.



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After a brief three-year stint living with and caring for a distant relative, Thomas was right back on the streets in

January of 2014.

Recently, he applied for a job helping deliver blankets to other homeless men, and, despite his truck driving

experience, long-term sobriety, proper documentation, and no record of arrests whatsoever, was denied the job

because he had bad credit.

He is currently still looking for a job and a permanent place to live.

Steve Thomas

The cycle is daunting. In order to get a job, you must be able to stay at that job for up to eight hours; but most

shelters require you to line up at 4pm and wait for hours. Everyone is kicked out in the morning, leaving these men

with nowhere to shower, shave, nd clean clothes, or get ready for work. Simply nding somewhere safe to stay for

the night is the most pressing need, and that presents its own challenges.

The idea that someone who wanted to work would just go into a shelter, get into a work program, nd a job and

exit, thats not the experience people have, said Nan Roman, President and CEO of the National Alliance to End

Homelessness. Largely, theyre on their own to gure out a way out. Theres an assumption that if theyre willing

participants in making their life better, the infrastructure is there to help them. But thats not true. Its spotty.

If they do nd somewhere to rest for the night, the problem becomes nding resources to help them get back on

their feet, which are far and few between.

Not all homeless people live in shelters or on the streets, explains Michael Stoops, Director of Community

Organizing for the National Coalition for the Homeless. They live doubled or tripled up, rent cheap motels by the

week, live in their cars or campers, or couch surf. But we need to start to do more than just help someone polish

up their resume to help them nd a job.

Darius Coey, 33, couch-surfed every time he was released from prison. For him, the mistakes came early. By age

17, the native Californian was already in juvenile detention, and when he was released, he supported himself the

only way he knew how: dealing drugs.

I looked into community college, but was told it wasnt an option, he said.

With nowhere else to live, he slept in an abandoned car every night for a year. The smell of mold was strong,

especially when it rained, and the windows did not roll all the way up. The two-door vehicle was a tight squeeze for

Coey, who is over six feet tall.



Darius Coey

He spent the next decade in and out of prisonnine times, to be exactwhere at least he had a place to stay and

three meals a day. After deciding enough was enough, upon his last release, he tried his hand at a homeless shelter.

Though the ve-hour wait for intake papers began at 4am, a riot broke out before his turn came, one that police

promptly broke up. Nobodys applications were processed that day.

After that, I walked around aimlessly looking for places that oered housing, said Darius. One man agged me

down and said,dont wander downtown too much, a cop will pick you up.'

He spent months in and out of shelters, looking for a job and for permanent housing.

If you dont have an ID card, social security number, or birth certicate, if your mind is always on where

youre resting your head after eight hours, or How can I bathe, it can hinder you from moving forward and nding a

job, he said. It took a lot of hustling to make it through. Even with the emergency shelter situation, there are

curfews and documents.

Eventually, he was lucky enough to come upon Chrysalis, a nonprot that has helped thousands of homeless and

low-income folks living in downtown L.A. ndand keepjobs and nd permanent housing. They reach out to drug

treatment centers, housing providers and the L.A. county jail system and promise those who want to work for it the

most valuable thing of all: independence.

They guaranteed me that if I tried to nd work, theyd eventually nd me housing, Coey explained.

A volunteer helped him write his resume, turning garbage into gold as Coey puts it, turning his prison record into

social experience, and drug dealing into collections, sales, and marketing. He was placed into not one but two job

programs.

The sad reality is that for many people who are street homeless, a job may never be a reality. Severe mental illness,

years of street life and/or addiction can have long-term and permanent consequences, said Elizabeth Daly, Vice

President of Development and Communications at Chrysalis. For these folks, the most important thing is harm

reduction and attempting to get them o the streets before they die there.

Now, Coey now starts his days at 4am with a Jane Fonda workout and two cups of Starbucks Coee at his desk at

the James Wood Community Center, where he helps feed other folks looking for housing. He also operates a lunch

program for seniors in need. Hes currently living in an apartment with no assistance, real rent as he calls it, and

paying his own way. Hes also counting his blessingsthe ability to cook dinner in his kitchen and visit with his

children, who are now in his life.

To be sure, longer-term residential programs focused on employment do exist, but they are more expensive to fund

and maintain.

The DOE Fund in New York City is one of those rare places.

After serving a term for using and dealing drugs, Troy Cochran, 40, wanted to kick the drug habit that left him at

rock bottom, but the rst stop on his way to a second chance, the Wards Island Shelter, was a nightmare.



It was lthy. Hopelessness was everywhere. I was stepping on crack vials in the bathroom, he said. I walked into

the oce and spoke to a case manager, and told him wanted to stay clean and get to work. They told me to pack up

my things and head to Harlem.

He was directed to the DOE Fund, who works in alliance with the East Midtown Partnership, among other

Neighborhood Improvement Districts. The program is unique in that men are given a clean, safe place to stay while

they earn wages and get used to re-entering the workforce. A portion of their wages are withheld so they can have

the nancial resources theyll need to secure housing when they graduate.

Cochran still felt the lure of the old neighborhooddrugs, old friends but forged ahead on his way to and from

work and always landed safely back at his apartment by Yankee Stadium, where he grew up. By day, he pushed the

blue trash bucket down the streets of midtown where he used to sleep on at night.

Troy Cochran

Now back on his feet and living on his own, he works as Security Supervisor at the DOE Funds Harlem Center for

Opportunity.

Society is often too quick to write o some people as lost causes. The trainees on our streets may still be

struggling, but most of them will break out of the negative cycle of crime, addiction, and homelessness, said Rob

Byrnes, President of the East Midtown Partnership.

Demand for these programs far overwhelms the ability to supply, and indeed, they are expensive to maintain.

George McDonald, Founder and President of The Doe Fund, said that though there is much to do, we have come a

long way.

Thirty years ago, homeless people were crushed by garbage trucks, because you couldnt tell the dierence

between a pile of trash and a human being, said McDonald. That doesnt happen as much anymore. But its still a

crisis. As long as people who are able to work are suering on the streets, its a crisis.

Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it will award $1.8 billion in grants to

homeless housing and service programs across the country. Hopefully, that money will go towards funding more

comprehensive programs like DOE and Chrysalis, who focus on both housing and job training and placement,

securing a second chance for those who need it.

Homelessness isnt just about not having a home. Its about not having opportunity,McDonald said. Weve seen

people who society has rejected become some of the hardest working model citizens you can imagine. We invested

in them, but they do the work. The root cause is a lack of investment in human beings.



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ABOUT AUTHOR

HELAINA HOVITZ

Helaina is Editor in Chief and Co-Creator of Aect Magazine. Connect with her on Twitter@HelainaHovitz or at HelainaHovitz.com.

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