Mona

Mona Bailey has been spreading aloha among her unhoused community of friends, neighbors, and supporters for 15 years. Growing up the youngest of 18 children on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, she has always found comfort in a large network of people. Athletic in her youth, she earned a volleyball scholarship to the University of Hawaii. Unfortunately, while swimming and diving off island cliffs with friends one day, she jumped into the ocean during a deceptively low tide and broke both her legs, ending her ability to compete in college sports.

After getting married, she and her husband moved to San Diego where they started a family, living in Golden Hill for about 15 years before she discovered her husband was cheating on her. Despondent, she ended up at a trolley station crying unconsolably and suicidal. A man there offered to help. Suddenly she was surrounded by cops. The Alpha Project winter shelter made room for her, but since this was at a time when tent shelters were only open during the harshest weather conditions, she had to leave in the spring. From there she was accepted into St. Vincent’s, then moved in with a female friend. Unfortunately, the friend was an alcoholic who “could get really mean, especially when she was high and hallucinating.” So Mona stayed with a cousin in Oceanside. It was there she became sick enough to seek medical attention. She initially thought it was something to do with her asthma. “With this heat, my asthma is bad,” she said. On closer inspection, doctors discovered she had breast cancer. Doctors at Scripps Hospital also recommended giving her a pacemaker to deal with her heart issues, but because the cancer was also in her bones, they determined they couldn’t risk cutting her chest open. So she takes one day at a time. “I’m still here, but I get tired,” she said.

That heart condition has her going in and out of hospital stays, and relying on friends and family for basic needs. Her tent neighbor Bella helps her get to a bathroom. Bella and her girlfriend Amber bring her food from a local church that regularly hands out meals. “Women have to band together,” Amber said. Another neighbor went to fill their shared generator with gas. Meanwhile, a city sweep crew that was removing tents, belongings, and trash from the sidewalk down the street was inching closer to Mona’s compound. Police officers started talking to people in the tent next to hers, urging them to vacate and take their belongings or risk losing them. Then they arrived at Mona’s tent. She opened the tent door and showed them her wheelchair. They gave her a little more time. They also asked if she wants to go to a shelter. She said yes, if there’s a bottom bunk available. The officers called around to the various shelters, but there was no open bottom bunk. Friends started helping her dismantle her structure, moving her belongings across the street.

Mona said she has gone through several case workers trying to get housing, but her SPEDAT number is low, which means, according to the system, she isn’t a high-priority individual when it comes to housing. “I haven’t been raped and I have no mental health issues,” she said. “And I’m not trying to get on no cuckoo medicine just to get housing.” Meanwhile, she knows where to go for medical and dental appointments, where to shower and get food and hygiene items, and she no longer has the energy to keep looking for housing, especially when she anticipates she will just be rejected again.

Despite her situation, Mona has an optimistic personality, helpful to other unhoused folk whenever she can. Her tent is like a double-wide - two beds, a refrigerator, a rug, bags of electrical chords, clothes, and food. The roll-away spare bed is for any woman who needs a safe place, she said. She sees a lot of pregnant teenagers and young women, and offers to take them in. “When they are addicted already it’s hard, though” she said. “I have them call their parents. They are afraid of their parents (back home), so they runaway, but after being here on the street, some of them make that call and their families come get them.”

Mona has never been assaulted, she said. “You know me. I got eight bruddahs. You going to get eight ass-whoopings you mess with me!” she laughed. People tend to watch out for each other in this part of East Village. For instance, when they see “jake hats,” she said, - their name for “half-naked weirdos screaming on the side of the street” - someone typically calls the police. “And they put them in jails and do nothing for their mental issues,” Mona said, her voice tinged with anger. Another problem for all homeless, especially women, are the sexual predators. “They’ll drive up next to you and ask ‘how much?’.” She mentioned that many of her neighbors on the street have served time in jail and therefore they can’t hold pepper spray. “How can we protect ourselves? Clearly females are targets out here,” Mona said. “I’m a fourth waiver [meaning she has waived her right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures] so when they found it in my bag, they could have taken me to jail but only gave me a warning and took the spray.”

About five years ago she was running to move her belongings ahead of a street sweep when she fell and hit the pavement hard, dislocating a hip. She didn’t go to the hospital right away, just bearing the pain, accepting donated walkers and wheelchairs. “That’s how we do it out here. We leave to go for medical treatment and lose everything (belongings and tents).”

Mona has temporarily stayed with one of her daughters, but that doesn’t ever lead to long term stability. “She’s her own person,” she said of her daughter. “She has her own daughters. I was raised to do things a certain way. We don’t always agree, but we’re family.” The recent escalation of downtown sidewalk sweeps as a result of the camping ban has been hard for people in wheelchairs, she said. The opening of baseball season has also brought on intense pressure for people living on the street to constantly relocate. Mona is counting on the kindness of her homeless community and volunteer outreach workers to help her move around. Mona hasn’t given up hope she can one day get a housing voucher.