I was 20 years old, recently dropped out of college, and was just fired from a secretarial job in Houston (they wanted me to wear a skirt). I had a couple hundred dollars in my pocket, a small pickup with a camper shell, an unemployed boyfriend with stories of how beautiful Key West was this time of year, and “nothing better to do”. Hurricane Andrew hit Florida a couple weeks before, devastating part of that state.
We (he) decided to head out to Florida and see what there was to see. The “plan” was to pick up labor jobs with the contractors that were in Florida to rebuild after the storm.
But first, Key West! We got down to Key West in late summer, before tourist season started. We lived in my truck, ate as cheaply as possible, smoked cigarettes to keep down hunger, showered on the beach and bummed around. I looked for temp jobs and found out one important thing. You had to have an address and a phone number to get a temp job. The address had to be “local”. This was the early 90’s before cell phones and pagers. The lack of a phone and address made it impossible for me to get a job.
We managed to stay in Key West for a month or so living on the $ I started with, until tourist season started and the local police politely invited us to get off the island. On the way back up towards Miami we ran into a construction crew that was desperate for workers, even a girl and a skinny long haired guy, so we got our first roofing and construction jobs. That gave us enough cash to stay in a cheap hotel for a couple weeks. Eventually the work ran dry and so did the money.
We ended up staying in a spare room of a guy we met. And, because I had an address and phone number, I was able to get a temp job. Which worked right until my truck was repossessed for missing payments. I lost my job because I couldn’t get to work which was 40 miles away with no public transit options. Because I lost my job the guy we were staying with decided we were bad news and kicked us out.
We headed for the beach, of course, this time without a car. We found a Covenant House shelter for youth. We pretended that we were 18 and stayed at the shelter for a couple nights until we ran into someone that helped me bail my truck out of repo. The day we got the truck out of repo the hydraulics for the clutch failed. A $750 repair. The same guy, an angel named Kevin with a very sad story, paid for the repairs too.
Florida wasn’t a great place to be anymore so he bummed/I worked our way north along the coast as far north as New York City (not a pleasant place to be homeless - I drove through and kept on going). We stopped for a couple weeks in the Finger Lakes area of New York for another temp job, and ran out of money in Chicago.
In Chicago, we met someone who let us sleep in his living room with two very large, furry, smelly, white Akita dogs. Armed with phone number and address I got another temp job. Not having money for anything but cigarettes and fare for the “L” to get to/from work, I had to rely on bags of food from the Catholic Charities food bank to eat for a couple weeks. The temp job eventually became permanent and we were able to save up enough money to get our own place in a “loft” in an industrial building in the South Loop section of Chicago. We lived there for 3-4 years.
What I learned is... even if you have marketable skills, there are some requirements to get a job that almost require you have a home.
- You have to be able to appear at an interview clean and well kept (not covered in dirt and grime with greasy hair because you haven’t been able to bathe in 2 weeks)
- You have to be able to appear in clean clothes and have more than one set of clothes
- You have to have a phone number
- You have to have an address
- You have to be able to get to work
Now-a-days I’m sure there are some additional challenges like:
- You have to have access to a computer and internet to do the online application
- You have to have an email address to communicate with potential employers, even at the local fast food joint
People who are living in their cars have a small advantage. They can, like I did, at least keep a set or two of clean clothes on hand and they can get to/from work.
These are the challenges faced by an able bodied young adult with marketable basic skills and determination to get a job. I wasn’t suffering from mental illness, drug addiction or health problems. I was just stupid.
I can easily imagine in today’s Silicon Valley there are people who are competent and find themselves on the streets living in their cars (if they are lucky enough to own their car outright). The company they work for “right sized” to make stock holders happy. They have no savings because rent takes every dime they have. Their landlord evicts them for higher rent payers and keeps the security deposit. Suddenly these people have no address, no reliable power source for that all important phone number and a very limited window in which to find an address and get a job before they run out of gas, food and laundry money in one of the most expensive places to live in the USA.
The candidates yesterday were talking about “wrap around services” for the homeless. I wonder what services are available to people who are able to work that provide an address, phone number, place to keep a couple sets of clean clothes, power for the now-required electronics and a safe place to rest. That really is the bare minimum required for someone to get themselves a job. The next challenge is getting housing that a single earner can afford to rent, pay utilities, eat, clean clothes, etc, etc.
I don’t have a solution to the homeless “problem” but I do have strong empathy for the struggle. Hopefully, sharing this story helps people who haven’t been there understand a bit more what its like to get yourself back on your feet without a home.
