Billy Wade
Billy Wade, 47, grew up living with his maternal grandmother in the Midwest. When she died, he made his way west, first to Tucson, then San Diego after the trucking company where he worked laid him off. Six years homeless now, two of them in San Diego, he's found a rhythm, staying away from homeless who do drugs and smoke even cigarettes, staying out of trouble with police. Though his legs are swollen from sunburn he doesn't seek medical attention, because "I came from a poor family. If it's somewhat painful, it's gonna cost you an arm and a leg." He's afraid he might be diabetic. He is on no lists for housing because he's afraid it will eat away at his social security earnings and he's saving that for when he really needs it. In the meantime he lives off the kindness of strangers.
Read More
Mark Hicks
Mark Hicks, 36, was born in the iconoclastic community of Slab City in the Imperial Valley desert. Many of the families that were living there when he was growing up are still there, but he got tired of the lack of food and over abundance of sun, so he came west to San Diego. He met his life partner in 2010, and they had six and a half good years before HIcks' partner died in June of 2016. The shy artistic man and his pug Doogie have been homeless ever since, trying to stay away from crowds. Just now coming out of his grieving period, Hicks is trying to get his life back on track, find a job and a home. He wishes the public didn't stereotype all homeless as lazy and drug addicted. He also would like to see the city build more SROs and establish rent control so people could actually afford them.
Read More
Richard and Laura
Richard had a carefree childhood with five siblings in rural Arkansas, running through the woods, hunting frogs, fishing and building tree houses. A series of less-than-lucrative jobs landed him in San Diego, where he ended up homeless. After 15 years on the street, a bad fall and dizziness revealed congestive heart failure. Against the premonitions of doctors, who put him on oxygen and prescribed hospice care, Richard has defied their negative outlook by falling in love. And at the beginning of 2018, Richard and Laura made it official that they would spend the rest of their lives together by getting married in a small ceremony on the rooftop garden at Alpha Square downtown. They hope to move into some kind of real housing situation eventually.
Read More
Raymond Caldwell
Raymond Caldwell is one of 14 children in a military family. They were all born in New Zealand, and when he was four, the lot of them moved to Arkansas. When he was 18 both parents died of cancer. The siblings took care of themselves with the help of the community. He was bored with working in a grocery store, however, so when a friend moved to San Diego, he tagged along. But the latent depression he harbored after his parents' death got him in fights and he ended up on the streets. Unable to get solid work, he lives on his SSI disability check, stays indoors for the first part of the month till his money runs out, and now stays out of trouble. The soft-spoken man smiles easily and doesn't ask for more than living one day at a time. He said he isn't on a housing list because he doesn't know how to sign up.
Read More
Richard and Ryan
Ryan Kubota, 43, and Richard Beckman, 25, met in line at the Salvation Army in Lodi, CA. in 2012. Bother were in failed relationships with women, seeking refuge and change at the Salvation Army. Beckman's parents were homeless in Brooklyn, New York. They passed him among relatives until he reached five years old and his grandmother gave him to CPS to be adopted out. His adoptive parents were a bit stressful, he said, and they kicked him out at age 18. Not long after that, he was walking home from an AA meeting and was attacked, left for dead. Kubota was by his side when he came back to life; in a body bag. The two were married finally, earlier this month, at First Lutheran Church, surrounded by homeless friends. Their honeymoon was spent on the same tired picnic bench, however. They are hoping to find gainful employment and a home away from the streets together.
Read More
Richard Mathis
Richard Mathis, 61, grew up playing in the woods of Little Rock, Arkansas with four sisters and a brother, hunting frogs, building tree houses, chasing rabbits and generally exploring the outdoors. A truck driving job brought him to the west coast but the recession forced his company to cut the workforce, including Mathis. He tried to make it on his own, rather than head back to Arkansas, but housing prices forced him into homelessness. He lived in and out of shelters for 15 years, getting his meals there and his mail at Neil Good Day Center, until one day in February this year when he fell ill. Tests revealed he has congestive heart failure. Alpha Project for the Homeless found him housing for what might be his last six months. For now he has a great attitude and a comfortable home he shares with his fiance and their dog.
Read More
Hayden
Hayden Sumner, 50, joined the Navy at age 19. He saw the good in people and wanted to live a life of service to others. But his mother more closely resembled Ma Barker than June Cleaver. She was wanted by the FBI for credit card fraud. When a fellow sailor discovered Hayden was gay, and told their superior officers, that quickly ended his nearly eight year career in the military. After working two jobs at a time, enduring physical and psychological abuse from a partner for over 12 years, he fled to San Diego where he hid out in a canyon. A VA worker drew him out and set him up with a housing voucher. But he has trouble staying away from the drug scene he wants no part of. He's hyper enough without stimulants, he said. His goal is to bring renewable energy jobs to the homeless so they not only do something constructive for the planet, but regain a sense of pride and self-worth. Now would be a good time to start, he said.
Read More
Thomas
Thomas, 55, grew up in San Diego. He went to several different high schools because it was the era of busing kids around the county to better integrate students of different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. He worked at several jobs and ended up as a marketing manager for a technical college. Then he developed lung cancer. He credits his supervisors with great compassion, trying to limit his work load and allowing for long absences. But the chemotherapy just beat the energy out of him. Now he’s on permanent disability, but he lost his job, his home and his car to medical bills. “Just trying to survive is a 24/7 job,” Thomas said. “There’s no showers, no public bathrooms.” More than anything he misses the ability to have a good hot meal, specifically steak, or eggs and potatoes for breakfast. He and his immediate neighbors on a freeway overpass help each other move their belongings each week when the city crews come to clean up. Ironically, he moves three blocks to the sidewalk in front of where he used to live.
Read More
Mark Sheetz
Born in Arizona, his military family moved around and settled in Kentucky. Mark migrated to Texas then Florida pursuing a career in radio, but ending up waiting tables before joining the circus, then catching a bus to San Diego. After a brief stint at St. Vincent de Paul, where he felt the staff wasn't very helpful, and other shelters only had programs for addicts, he went back onto the streets. Eventually he was pressured at gunpoint into smuggling migrants across the border till he was caught and jailed. Now he plays banjo and sings with the homeless Voices of Our City choir, trying to find a place to stay indoors and make an honest living.
Read More
Sandra and Gary
Sandra and Gary were sleeping near each other and watched over each other’s stuff on the streets of San Diego for month before they gradually became a couple. Sandra, 44, was born here, and moved with her family to Cancun when she was five. Even with five older brothers and sisters, lots of aunts, uncles and cousins, she had to work two jobs when she was old enough to do so. The work was hard on her because she injured her back at age eight, falling from a playground bar onto the concrete below. She was too young for surgery, they told her, so her back never healed properly. She moved back the the U.S. at age 31 and started working in the fields in Arizona, mostly harvesting broccoli. After three years it proved too difficult, after her husband pushed her backwards, further injuring her back, dislocating two discs. She moved to San Diego to try hotel work again, but only found 12-hour shifts. She sent her two children to live in Cancun while she tried to sort things out. Gary, 55, grew up in Minnesota. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18, a combat veteran of Desert Storm who retired after 20 years with an honorable discharge. He isn’t receiving his benefits, however, because it’s difficult to send papers to someone without an address, they tell him. He figures he is due $7,000 in back pay and has been on the list for the VASH housing program for two years, hoping for help soon.
Read More
Jeff
Ten weeks after Jeff Burrell was born in rural NE Ohio his Welsh-Apache mother handed him over to his French-Canadian father and left. His father, a womanizer, used Jeff as “punching bag,” for everything that went wrong mentally, physically or financially. To escape, he joined the Coast Guard, which put him on an ice breaker in the coldest regions of the planet for over three years. He spent time in Florida driving a forklift, in Missouri at a poultry processing plant and back home in Ohio before arriving in San Diego. Looking for quick cash he fell in with smugglers, moving people north and cars south across the border. That earned him two stints each in federal and state prisons. Now, on the proper medications for bipolar disorder, he's a calmer kinder person, with a service dog that he says shares his Napoleon complex. All he wants now is a roof and four walls to call home.
Read More
Pastor Mike
Mike Little knew he was going to join the seminary by the time he was in high school, carrying a Bible around the hallways. His bronchitis kept him from joining the Air Force, which disappointed him and his career Marine father and his mother: a roller queen with the Bay City Bombers in Chicago. He fell in with a street ministry on the South Side, which lasted till one of the ministers was busted molesting a young girl. He traveled the country preaching, until a bad car accident sidelined him. Though his relationships have been extreme, one partner committed suicide, another was heavily addicted to crystal, and he is homeless now, his mission is to find funding for his dream: a ranch in Julian where homeless can live and learn skills like carpentry, landscaping and metal work, while having a safe place to live.
Read More
Jesse
Jesse, 45, gets tired of people judging him and other homeless individuals. He can see it in their eyes, but tries to not let it get to him. "They threw rocks at Jesus," he points out. And those people judging him, "they're gonna have to answer to St. Peter in the end, just like we are." Jesse has PTSD from a life of struggle, fighting for stability. He was tired of his foster parents telling him what to do and trying to force him to read the Bible all the time. He moved out, but being homeless in New England gets rough when winter temperatures are 20 below. He lived in seven states before landing in San Diego, where he doesn't think the city does enough to help the homeless.
Read More
Thomas
Thomas Burke, 34, was born in Hawaii, into a military family. He loved sports and played football, hoping to make it into onto an NFL team someday. He had two older brothers, but one is now a sister. A U.S. Army veteran, he saw combat during Iraqi Freedom from 2004 to 2006. He left with an honorable discharge, but feels the effects. He said he’s been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with bipolar disorder, ADHD and depression.
He has a temper, he admits, and loud arguments led to a divorce, which didn’t help him being grounded at all. He said his drug of choice is alcohol, and it’s not doing his liver any good. And as for his medications, he hasn’t been taking them for the last month because he lost his i.d., or else it was stolen, and he can’t retrieve medications without it.
Read More
Anthony
Anthony Robinson was a promising young chef back home in Charleston, South Carolina. At age 22, he was working at two different restaurants as sous chef. With energy to spare, he thought "why not?" when some undercover cops approached him with an offer to help with a drug ring, and make some money doing it. Unfortunately they were dirty cops, illegally operating a drug ring. So Anthony had to choose between jail and moving out of state in the plea bargain. Leaving behind his nine-year-old daughter and her mother, he went as far as he could, ending up at the Port of San Diego, where he quickly found work at NASSCO laying cable. Falling ill one day, his supervisor sent him to see a doctor. Anthony was told he was sick, yes, but he also had three herniated discs, and no one would dare operate on him, with one being so close to his neck. So, at 33, he filed for disability, and hasn't been able to work since. Not a drinker or drug user, he has developed a reputation for being trustworthy among the homeless community. Everyone loves Anthony.
Read More
Jack
Jack, 40, grew up in New Mexico. His adoptive parents made sure he got to take college courses in high school, he was that smart. At age 19 he fell in love and married a man ten years older. When Jack was accepted to Stanford Law School they moved to the Bay Area. He began working for a world class law firm after only two years of school. But the long hours kept him from his relationship, so he gave it all up; the two moved to Rancho Santa Fe and had parties. That's when he discovered his husband was meeting men online and having sex in public bathrooms. Jack learned he was HIV positive. His partner got abusive, would send him out on needless errands when drunk, so he ended up with DUIs and a stint in jail where he was raped by guards. Out on the streets, Jack is trying to put his life back together. He's studying neuropathy, wants to be a scientist, find secure housing and maybe learn to trust people again.
Read More
Don
Don Kohnhorst, 61, plays air guitar in church. If he had a real guitar he might make some money, he said, playing for tourists over in Balboa Park. He inherited his father's singing voice, though he never was able to follow in his father's footsteps playing country music in bars. His father looked like a tall blond Johnny Cash, and no one messed with him. He and Don's mother drank too much. Don more resembles Willie Nelson, and prefers weed. He keeps to himself, on the streets of Banker's Hill, and hopes to get into a senior affordable housing complex some day soon. One of the fortunate people on the street, he's never been to jail, has a good relationship with local police, and he doesn't have any health issues, though he's afraid the current government will take away Medicare, so he'd like to see a dentist before that happens.
Read More
Tim
Tim followed in the footsteps of generations in his family before him by joining the U.S. Navy, escaping the farms and factories of rural Iowa. He spent five years loving the experience traveling from a construction detail on Diego Garcia Island to Guam then Japan and Greece, where he swears he lived in a previous life. Once he finished his military service he returned to the factories, fixing his assembly line belt to make "invisible pieces" so he'd get paid more than the dismal minimum wage of $3.35/hour. Once he was caught, he couldn't find work in Iowa so he moved to San Diego in 1994, where he's lived an unassuming existence in the shadows of abandoned buildings and freeway bridges, sipping 7-11 coffee and smoking pot. Tim makes a point to catch the free organ concerts in Balboa Park, especially when organist Carol Williams is performing a tribute to David Bowie or Jim Morrison.
Read More
Matthew
Matthew, aka Shadow, 31, has a winning smile and clear blue eyes. He sits cross-legged against a signal box with a cardboard sign folded so many times it’s about to split in half. At age 14 months, doctors told his mother he has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a rare neurological disease. They told her he would be about 70% delayed in all things motor and cognitive. His mother was more concerned about her drug habit, and not getting too bruised by her husband, also an addict and alcoholic. He learned to swim, and that was the best time of his life, as a teenager, until his grandfather pulled him from the program. Later, after a turbulent marriage, jail and divorce, he is happy with his new girlfriend, an old high school flame, and together they hope to panhandle enough money to get a home together and start fresh.
Read More
Chase
Chase Langley, 41, knows he's lucky to be alive. It was 11 years ago, at the age of 29, he first was hit with the lymphoma cancer that killed his twin brother at the age of nine. Of six children, only he and his brother got the disease, but he's also had two nephews die of it. Born in Illinois to a rear admiral father and medical officer in the Air Force mother with a high security clearance, battles raged at home when it was clear Chase was gay. His father put him up for adoption and worked to throw gay men and women out of the Navy. Chase got a bus ticket to San Diego, learned to be an excellent pastry chef, and had a nice life living in North Park. Until he got sick. Medical bills made it impossible to afford to stay in a home. He's been on the street for two years now, when he's not in the hospital.
Read More
