Story by Jakob McWhinney

Photos by Peggy Peattie

Matt Masloski, 37, keeps photos of his two children in his wallet. They live with their mother in Nebraska, from where he moved to San Diego five years ago for a new start. When he arrived in San Diego he was shocked by the number of people living on the street. And that number, Masloski said, is steadily growing. “There’s new people every day,” he said.

The number of individuals living on the street isn’t the only thing on the rise, according to Masloski. “Fentanyl has hit the streets at an alarming rate,” he said. “Since COVID it’s blown up. It’s everywhere.” There were times, he said, when it was impossible to find any other drugs on the street, even meth.

In the last two years alone he’s lost close to 30 friends to fentanyl-related overdoses, and the trend shows no signs of stopping, he said.

He usually sleeps in an emergency exit in a parking garage in Pacific Beach, but he’s stayed all over San Diego. He once even squatted in a $7 million mansion on Mount Soledad. When the police showed up he was sweeping the kitchen and making himself some eggs for breakfast, he said. The owner of the home didn’t end up pressing charges precisely because he’d been cleaning up after himself.

But he wasn’t always so lucky. He was arrested and charged with a felony residential burglary after what he said amounted to a misunderstanding. He’d entered a house he thought was vacant and encountered a 97-year-old man who spoke almost exclusively Arabic.

The two spoke through broken sentences, and Masloski showed the man pictures of his children back home. Masloski, who for years worked as an ASE-certified mechanic, asked the man if he wanted help fixing up the old limo parked in the driveway and if it was for sale. The man brought out a key to the car and placed it on Masloski’s backpack.

Shortly thereafter, the man’s son returned home and while moving his backpack out of the way of his car, Masloski said the key slipped into his backpack. The man’s son told Masloski that the limo wasn’t for sale, but brought him a lemonade for the road. When the man’s son discovered the key to the limo was missing, he called the police, who tracked Masloski down and found both the key and the lemonade.

“So now I’m a felon,” Masloski said. “The difference between trespassing and residential burglary is a thin line of someone being there.”

Masloski has avoided staying at shelters or safe camping sites because of the often onerous parameters residents are required to operate by – such as strict hours by which individuals must be on site for the night or risk losing your bed space.

“A lot of us have normal lives still that don’t fall into their parameters,” he said.

He’s also wary of shelters because of the potential for abuse or sexual assault, which Masloski said his girlfriend experienced firsthand at St. Vincent De Paul. When she tried to report the assault, he said, the shelter kicked her out.

And even beyond the potential for physical danger, Masloski doesn’t believe that many shelters have the capacity to offer the personalized services homeless individuals so badly need to help them get off the street.

“We’re not all just the same and we’re not all drug addicts or criminals, vagrants or mentally unstable people. We all have different issues of why we’re out here,” he said.

Often, shelters stick folks in large groups and give them a number, he said, when in reality they all need something different.

For Masloski, one recurring challenge has been to simply get a California ID, which he needs in order to renew his mechanic certification in California. Ironically, in order to do so he needs two forms of picture ID.

When he arrived from Nebraska, where passports are a relatively rare possession because of its central, landlocked location, he only had his state ID. Masloski said he has never been able to secure the support he needs to get over that hurdle. He’s frustrated by officials’ ability to verify his identity in order to incarcerate him, while simultaneously being unwilling to use those same capabilities to help him to get an ID, which he says would go a long way towards getting himself back on his feet.

“I’ve even asked my probation office or the police to verify who I am so I can get an ID and they just won’t do it,” Masloski said.

It’s services like this, and services that extend far beyond just getting an individual experiencing homelessness through the door of a place to live, that Masloski feels are so badly needed. Getting someone into housing is one thing, he said, but individuals being able to sustain that housing is something entirely different. Especially for individuals who may be unused to the grind of maintaining a place to live.

There should be a support system in place with individuals long term, Masloski said, “so you’re not just dropping somebody in a place for a month or two and saying ‘we got you in somewhere now you figure the rest out.’"

Ultimately, Masloski said he understands that change will not come easy. He knows it will require hard work, but he said he’s ready to make that commitment.

He’s not asking for free handouts, but rather work placement, and help navigating the often intricate web of requirements associated with accessing services and programs that already exist.

“People don’t learn if they just get something for free,” he said. “You got to be able to work for it.”