I’ve said quite a bit about the bad cops we have to contend with, but there are lots of really good cops too. I’ve had them give me money, food and clothing. They have come by my squat in extreme cold weather to be sure I’m ok. They’ve been lenient with me when they have caught me getting high. I just want you to know that the majority are ok. The problem is that we tend to tar them all with the same brush. When one of them beats one of us up or harasses us they all become the enemy. The reverse is also true. There lots of asshole addicts who bring it on themselves and on the rest of us, but most of us are just trying to survive and deal with our problems. Most of us try to remain as inconspicuous as possible, but it’s getting harder all the time because the authorities have been fencing off all the little hideaways where we go to sleep or do our drugs. When there is no place to hide, we are forced to do them in public places. I wonder which approach is better.

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You know, crack is so fucked up. I had been trying to quit ever since I realized that I had become an addict, but I never made it more than 2 weeks. Every addict knows that it’s stealing his humanity and destroying his body, but hardly anyone succeeds in kicking it. 20 years ago, when I became an addict, we didn’t know how bad the stuff was. We thought it was like smoking a little grass. You know; something to share with your friends at a party. My friends and I would get together on Friday nights and smoke some rock to get in the party mood, but it didn’t take long before we were smoking on Saturdays too. Then it was one night through the week and before long it was every day and every night. I was the first one to realize that we’d become addicts. We were all successful businessmen. Most of us owned our own companies and had several employees, so when I told my friends that I thought we were addicts they all laughed. I told them that if any of them could go a full week without smoking I’d admit I was wrong, but none of us made it.

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I am homeless. This is the second time in a year that I’ve been so. It ain’t easy. Just about a year ago, I was laid off from a job I had held for four years. It was a pretty good job, doing research, geographic information systems, and data analysis for an institute at a local university. The layoff was unexpected. I drew unemployment for awhile, had an apartment.

Not long after the layoff, however, I went into a deep clinical depression, was hospitalized for awhile and have needed to spend a time recovering. Financially, however, I was a mess, lost my apartment, and spent several weeks in a local homeless shelter. Boy, did I learn a lot.

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Flashback to the winter of 2007:

I had landed back in California on December 18^th, feeling sure that someone would need a house sitter for the holidays. My reason for leaving Florida was that following 4 years and about 10 surgeries, I finally found myself in a situation where I could either pay the rent or buy groceries. My SSI disability check was $630. a month and the rent was $310. My credit card had finally maxed out trying to fill in the gaps. It looked like my surgeries were over (they weren’t) and so I got it into my head that I could head back to California, easily locate a live-in position as a companion to an elderly person, and start saving funds to get on with my life. I had been working part-time for Visiting Angels in Florida and they had a franchise close to where I was heading in California.

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I used to be a successful and wealthy businessman, but I was homeless for 10 years. Before that, I was the owner of 2 Century 21 Real Estate offices with 100 employees. I had recently received an award for having the third highest sales volume for all of Century 21 of Canada and I was doing small real estate developments when I met Marlene and fell in love.

She introduced me to crack cocaine and that was the beginning of my downfall. At the time, I had been considering running for the Mayor’s office in East York, but my new lifestyle precluded that. Within 2 years of my first taste of crack, I was bankrupt and living on welfare. Once my money was gone, so was Marlene.

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For those who were not aware, today is National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day.

“Each year since 1990, on or near the first day of winter and the longest night of the year, National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) has sponsored National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day to bring attention to the tragedy of homelessness and to remember our homeless friends who have paid the ultimate price for our nation’s failure to end homelessness. This year, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC) has joined us in co-sponsoring this event.”

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This week’s release of the US Conference of Mayors 2008 Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness demonstrates not only an increase in the numbers of people requesting emergency food assistance but also a widening gap between supply and demand. In some areas the unmet need was as much as forty percent.

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