I was good. I wasn’t always homeless. It’s been a long haul. I’m from all over, I’m a walker. I walk everywhere. I was on the streets over 25 years. They found me out in Norwalk, one of the advocates here. I had been here a long time ago before, for just a few months, and he asked me to come back, so I decided to come back. I’ve been here over 9 months now. It took me a long time to be inside if I’m being honest. I’m 60 years old now.

 

It’s a good program, how they have it set up with housing and all that stuff. It’s long term and there’s not a lot of programs like that anymore. You earn money while you’re here, and they save it for you. That’s for when I leave.  I go to work every day. They have a class in here with computers, so I’m learning computers now. I’m learning a lot of artwork. I’m gonna go to LA trade tech; I want to learn sign language interpreting.  I do a reading class too. The teacher, he’s actually a writer and a historian out in LA. You read and kind of talk about what you read. I’ve read over 40 something books.

 

Everybody’s been trying to get me to do this for a long time. There’s a lot of good people here. I had a support system. It’s not like other programs, that’s what makes it unique I think here. When you first get here there’s different groups you go to. The groups are separated enough, and you got a lot of your own free time. 

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You don’t know why people get out there. Out there, there’s no rules. You do what you wanna do. You don’t have to answer to nobody but you, and that’s why people stay out there. That’s the truth. I didn’t want to be sober. I didn’t want to be clean anymore. I got to that point. If I wanted to be, I could do it. I just didn’t wanna be. That’s the hard part; you gotta wanna be. I had to go to where they call the bottom. I needed to go. All the way or nothing. You can’t force anyone to do it. Things like this, it makes awareness, so you don’t look at homelessness like when I was a kid. They're not all drug addicts. When you live out there you find out the truth.