1. Article: Ex-Homeless Man
Author: Kelly Roger Lemieux
Date: January 12 2012
Word Count: 580
I first ran into trouble in 2009, with an overnight stay in jail: The handcuffs, the prison
jumpsuit, the bologna sandwiches, the chilly air conditioning. Over the next two years,
I’d end up in jail about six times. You can’t pay your rent, check your bills or clean your
house when you’re in lock-up.
Over that same period, I ended up in mental clinics and hospitals about four
times as well. You also can’t pay your rent, check your bills or clean your house when
you’re in a hospital. My life was in ruins and I was low on cash.
After release from my final stint in jail in the spring of 2011, my former home, a
condo on Capitol Hill, was a situation that was no longer available, so I stayed with
family in the Denver suburbs. My only income was a few dollars from my folks and I
used that for cigarettes and the occasional beer. I didn’t even have bus fare.
After about three months sleeping in my folks’ basement, I was told “You can’t
stay hear anymore”, so I got a gig sleeping at the 11th Avenue Hotel for a few weeks,
living in the basement room with a bed and a locker. The joint’s rates had doubled since
my first stay there in 2010.
The 11th Avenue Hotel’s rent was more than my Unemployment Insurance,
which I’d gotten restarted, could cover, so I ended up homeless in August. I planned my
one outfit, my one bag and stored the rest of my possessions with family. I had my
notebook, with listings for food banks, shelters and free medical care at the Stout Street
Clinic. I decided to store my laptop computer with family as well, giving up my life as a
writer while subsisting on the streets.
I tried the New Genesis shelter in Uptown first, but ended up at the Denver
Rescue Mission, confused by the multiple lines, the byzantine schedule and chip lottery.
I got a bed the first few weeks and slept with my head on my backpack, my stinky socks
nearby, usually reading a paperback novel. The swearing, the threats of knife fights and
the criminal element scared me.
A new friend showed me the Saint Francis Day Center the morning after my first
stay at the Mission. Now I had a place to crash and read the newspaper during the day,
although the place got crowded when the weather turned cold and wet. The free coffee
in the morning was a plus, the in-and-out-shelter-policy vaguely frightening and the
outdoor smoking area filled with loud street people a difficulty I dealt with.
My old condo became available again in the Fall of 2011, at $200 a month
subsidized rent. It was temporary housing and I no longer remembered how to run a
household after so much time spent homeless and transient, but in October I moved in,
with a couple of chairs, a bed and my old desk for writing. I worried about food stamps,
my work search for Unemployment Insurance and ran into the occasional street person,
working the Christ’s Body food kitchen a few blocks away. I remembered my time on the
streets, thankful I no longer had to live on them. I had a roof over my head. I was and
am an Ex-Homeless Man now.