What were some of the events that led up to you being homeless?
“I’ve been homeless three times in the past three years I’ve been here. Starting from the beginning, once I left my high school to come up here for college, I was staying with my grandfather for a while, and during that […] time our aunt decided to move in with her six kids and her boyfriend and it was a two-bedroom house. So you can see where this is kind of going and it kind of drove my grandpa bonkers, so he moved into an old-folks home and then I come home that night, and my aunt saying she was moving out the next day and I hopefully have a place to stay. Yeah, it was kind of a bummer. So that’s what started the first homeless streak. And during that time, it was like a month before I got my own place .
Second time, it was about this time again, my job cut my hours severely, and it was like the last month of my lease, and I was in a small apartment by myself, $650 for rent, actually it was like $584 but after bills it was like $650 all by myself and I was doing it well, until they cut my hours. So that fell through so I lost my house on my last month of my lease. Yeah. It was literally like the week before the lease was over. It was horrible. And so that was the second time.
So from there I was homeless until about Jan. 23, where I moved to Lawrence, and I was living with a friend’s friend. And stayed there till like July 17, my roommate burnt down my house. He was smoking in his bed and he put it on the head stand, it caught his mattress on fire. It caught the rest of the house on fire, and I lost everything. So homeless again, until this year of Aug. 28, like two days after school started. I live over in Olathe now.”
What did you do during those times?
“Well a lot of people were like, ‘come stay with me, come stay with me,’ I really don’t like being a burden on other people, so I was like, ‘oh I got a place to stay, I got a place to say,’ when truth was I was just walking around at night, and finding things to do. Like I lost a lot of weight in the period of time I’ve been up here because I spent a lot of time just walking around at night.”
Where did you sleep?
“I didn’t. I kind of didn’t sleep at night. I walked around, kept moving so I didn’t feel like a bum, or a hobo or a homeless person. It was all about the mind thing for me. If I can feel like I’m not just hopeless on the street, that I can keep going on and moving forward. So I took my naps here at the school in the morning. I had people keep my clothes before my house burnt down, like the first two times, people had like I kept my clothes at someone’s house and like I would go there in the morning and change clothes and take a shower so I didn’t smell super bad, because that’s part of not being a hobo. Not smelling or looking the part. So after that, like that’s how I slept, and managed my time during time off. So I’m not saying it was like, ‘oh yeah I was happy to be homeless,’ because it stinks. But, you got to do what you got to do.”
Where were you working while you were homeless?
“I had a job at the Boston Market, right across the street before like the first time I was homeless, and the reason why I was homeless the second time was because my job didn’t give me enough money, and that’s before I started working here at the college. So […] that was the second time it was like a transition between that job and this job and now I have this job when my house burned down in Lawrence, and it’s been a really big help here.”
What made you want to get involved with working on campus?
“I love it here. I specifically chose to come here because we have a community college back in Hutchinson Kansas, and it didn’t have any culinary or anything of that sort that I wanted. But I was also thinking of becoming a teaching major, which they have a pretty okay program there for that also, but I came up here, I saw the way it looked, I saw how people treated me, and I was like, ‘man I like this place, so that’s why. I wanted to become more involved. I want to be the reason why people are like, ‘Hey, I like this place.'”
What would you say you learned the most from being homeless?
“The most, keep your head up, because even though things, like bumpy things come along, if you like, keep a good enough attitude, it won’t destroy you. Just if you keep going for the goal you have in mind, that nothing should be able to stay in your way.”
Were there any specific resources that were available to you, did you go to any shelters, or food pantries?
“Sometimes I would browse for food from the food pantry up here, but I felt bad. I still was making money at the time, so I could buy my own food, and I felt that, it was for people who really couldn’t afford it, or anything like that. Because me, yeah I was homeless, but I was still okay. While some people can’t even afford the food, can’t get the food so I just let that be. And I didn’t go to a shelter, because I’m a hard head, and I didn’t want to feel like I was homeless. I would have never thought I would’ve been homeless, it’s just like me and my family have been uprooted a lot since we were young, so I’m used to moving around like that. But never thought I would’ve been homeless. But when it happens, it happens, and if you just panic and crumble, then you become like some of the other guys on the street you see today. There the guys who lost hope. Who didn’t see they had a future, so, you can’t be one of those guys. I got to make something out of myself.”
What would you say to people who are struggling?
“Well for my fellow strugglers out there, like I said before, the storm doesn’t last always, so just ride it through. That’s all I got to say.”
Compiled by Jessica Skaggs, managing editor, jskaggs4@jccc.edu.