Mike has been reliving a trauma every day for the last three years. His notebook is an angry testimonial to his near death experience, and a memorial to the friends who died that day on the Ides of March 2021. “I was talking with Randy,” Mike said, “and then he was gone.” He wipes away tears with his shirt sleeve as he recounts the memory.
Read MoreIzean “Isaac” Rim, 71, was in the room where it happened when the late homeless advocate Waterman Dave won his lawsuit against the city for unlawfully disposing of people’s personal belongings. The resulting funds went to creating the initial Transitional Storage Center, which used clean, empty waste bins in a secure, central location (at that time on 10th Avenue across from the downtown library) to provide individual storage spaces for unhoused individuals. Isaac has taken on Waterman Dave’s watchdog role on the city’s streets.
Read MoreWhen Moses first ended up on the streets five years ago, people thought he was a push over because he was quiet and didn’t fight back when people robbed or assaulted him. “I felt like I was painted in blood and dropped off in the middle of the Amazon forest in the middle of the night.” Moses landed on the streets after discovering his wife was cheating on him. “Man, she took everything. I didn't even get a paperclip. She just threw me out on the street and moved in her boyfriend that night.” He credits the constant support and encouragement from his daughters with giving him the fortitude to not only survive, but to become a support for others.
Read MoreQuietly sipping hot coffee and reveling in a fresh bear claw pastry, Mike waited his turn to get a hot shower courtesy of the portable shower unit parked behind St. Paul’s Church, courtesy of the Voices of Our City Choir. The 29-year-old Ohio native carries an umbrella to ward off the coming rain. He said it was a lot easier to deal with than the blizzards of snow he grew tired of in Ohio and then later in upstate New York. All of that was in sharp contrast to the heat he endured on his multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan while serving in the U.S. Army as a cook.
Read MoreArt gives our spirits a chance to soar, to reflect on and reframe the situations we are dealing with. Everywhere I meet up with individuals experiencing homelessness, I discover artists - painters, musicians, crafters of jewelry or pottery or textile arts, singers, poets, and sketch artists. It speaks to the perseverance of the soul and lifts up the creative voice. Here are some of the artists I photographed that ended up featured in San Diego Magazine.
Read MoreGhost Rider, aka David Lloyd, 65, was born in Iceland. His mother died in childbirth. He quit high school a month before graduation, but got his GED in jail at age 18. His father and brothers joined the military but recruiters wouldn’t take him because he was the “last son”. His father died in 1985 from complications due to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He got married young, but his wife was killed by a drunk driver when their daughter was two. After raising his daughter he took off hitchhiking across the U.S. and Canada.
Read MoreA second generation San Diegan, Aaron grew up in Pacific Beach. Both his parents were junkies, he said, but his father got sober before Aaron was born, hoping to persuade his mother to do the same. But it didn’t work. When Aaron was about a year old, his mother started taking him with her to drug deals. “Her rationale was, ‘Who’s going to shoot the lady with the baby?’ That was her mentality,” Aaron said.
Read MoreMoses’ mayoral campaign slogan is simple. “You cannot fix a city if you do not love the city.”
That’s why, Moses said, he’s going to one day run for mayor himself. He loves San Diego and wants to see it prosper, and believes a first step would be renovating historical landmarks that made it a tourist hub to begin with. But he also believes that in order to really start improving the city you need to start with the “weakest link,” which he thinks is people like himself — San Diego’s homeless. “How are we going to move up another step if they stay at the bottom?” he said. “We can’t move up because they're going to be like that ball and chain.”
Read MoreMatt 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. He was shocked by the number of people living on the street. “There’s new people every day,” he said. “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.
Read MoreBeginning with the early days when San Diego’s Voices of Our City Choir co-creator singer-songwriter Steph Johnson walked the streets offering oranges and a song to unsheltered members of the community, this unique coming together of souls has changed the lives of those who participate as well as those who hear them sing.
Read MoreThis Thanksgiving, many traditions were revived after being abruptly halted last year. One of those was Grandma’s Thanksgiving feast for the denizen of Balboa Park. Now that Richard, aka Grandma, lives indoors he has raised the bar. This year, the tenth annual feast, the cooking and prep went on for five days.
Read MoreIan, 41, was born in Ohio, but moved to San Diego when he was four. His father was in the navy and his mother was a registered nurse. He went to Spring Valley High School - a stand out water polo player. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried, he was abused by his step-father who threatened to have his two sons from a previous marriage beat him up if he said anything. A string of bad luck before, during and after his service in the Air Force finally broke his spirit. He and his dog Oreo make do on the streets.
Read MoreRandy, 63, was born and raised in San Diego, graduating from Sweetwater High with a love for anything to do with mathematics. He father, a veteran, convinced him to join the military after graduation. A long-haired surfer, Randy opted for the Merchant Marines, since they promised he would be sent to Hawaii. He was in Hawaii for two days before his unit was shipped to Saigon. As long as he has his dog Bullet with him, he is just fine, he said. Currently his is living in a downtown SRO, hoping to get into housing through the VASH program.
Read MoreOriginally from Okene, Oklahoma, Chris said he was the middle child, but lost track since he was in foster care since the age of three. In fact he was in 16 different homes before he aged out of the system. He learned construction in prison and on the job. He doesn’t remember a lot of dates, but one stands out. On June 17, 2016 he was shot by a Los Angeles police officer with bean bags. Chris spent 28 days in a hospital ICU unit. When he was released he was confined to a wheelchair due to the injuries.
Read MoreBorn in Denver, Colorado, Benito, 59, was one of 11 kids. The oldest brother, a Marine, died in Vietnam. He also has a brother in the Navy. Benito joined the Army. When on patrol in Iraq, a bullet sent a chip of concrete flying that broke his collarbone. That injury brought him home. His second wife died of a heroin overdose when their baby was six months old. That drove him into a depression that was hard to crawl out of, but he did. That lasted until light from a welding arc affected his vision, and he ended up an alcoholic and on the street again.
Read MoreAn interfaith memorial service was held for Randy Ferris, 65, Walter Jones, 61, and Rodney Diffendal, the three homeless men who were killed by a drunk driver on the morning of March 15, 2020 as they were resting in their tents on B Street near San Diego City College. Two men in wheelchairs who were injured during the same incident, Duane and Jesse, sat solemnly together during the service. The tunnel where it happened is still covered in chalk dedications to the fallen.
Read MoreTabor Wright, 30, is proud of being clean and sober. He was born in Southwest Colorado. When his father died in 2015 however, Tabor started shooting heroin. He came out to San Diego to get away from it all and entered a sober living home. He lasted only four days there because he felt like he was being judged for being gay by the Christians who ran the place. Now, however, he is worried that when he leaves the sober living place he is at now, without an income, he may end up homeless again.
Read MoreRichard has a quiet personality that works as a calm in the storm that can be daily survival for many homeless folks. Flush with cash and expensive toys in his early 20s in Minnesota, he sold it all and moved to San Diego when he found his lover in bed with another man. The cost of living in San Diego combined with an economic downturn forced him to live in his taxi, then to couch surf for nearly ten years with a friend down in Tijuana while crossing the border every day to do day labor work. He eventually moved back to San Diego where he spent 20 years living under the same tree in Balboa Park.
Read MoreThe local Harm Reduction Coalition holds street medicine outreach events despite looming rain clouds and a cold wind. They offer packages of fresh syringes, backpacks, clothing, food and Naloxene (Narcan). The Harm Reduction Coalition began operation in October 2022 following approval from the California Department of Public Health office of AIDS. According to the group’s executive director Tara Stamos-Buesig, they have also been doing syringe service outreach three days a week. San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of developing a needle exchange program, essentially repealing the ban on such programs enacted in 1997.
Read MoreTurtle, 38, grew up on the streets of San Diego with other street kids who ran away from foster care. He became streetwise and developed a talent for fashioning jewelry from copper wire and found objects. He also takes makes sure the older folks on the street are treated respectfully by other homeless and by passersby. During the pandemic lockdown, Turtle said is was like a madness out on the streets; too many drugs and no place to wash your hands or use the bathroom. When people can’t maintain a semblance of proper hygiene, he said, they start to go mad.
Read More
