I've been out here for about two years, about right here, about two years.
If you go down towards the PRTC and you go towards the drop-in winter shelter, there's
campsites around here, behind Kmart and stuff like that, that are 7, 8, 9, 10 people there.
The shelters are full, they're a very limited number of beds in our county.
There's over 500 homeless people, and there are only 150 beds, and that's in the winter
months.
In the summer months, there's only a hundred beds, so there's 400 people.
They live in their cars, they bounce around from friend to friend, or they try to stay
in hotels.
I want to stay with my mom, we live in Dumfries, stay with a friend of mine in Stafford.
We had our own little business, Stafford Power Wash and Painting.
I lived there in Stafford with him for a while.
If somebody has a job, say they're poor, they're not quite making ends meet, if they just lose
their insurance, say they can't make the insurance payment, and they lose that insurance, then
they will lose their license.
If they can't come up with the fee, which is $500, then they cannot get their license
restored, and then they lose their job, and then they become homeless, and it becomes
a vicious cycle.
I hate saying that I'm homeless, but coming out and saying I'm hungry, is there any way
you can, you know, throw 20 bucks my way or something like that?
20 bucks?
Did you give somebody off the street 20 bucks that you don't know?
I know that I'm serving people that are very highly educated, and they work, and they're
doing menial jobs, and they still cannot find shelter.
I was making $8 an hour there, but you know what, Labor Finders charges that company $17
an hour for me to be there, and I only get eight, so they're making $11 a pop on me per
hour.
The national news quoted the other day, and in one day, what, half a million jobs lost?
You know, the biggest corporations in the country are folding.
The auto industry, as we know it, is in danger of collapse.
The biggest banks in the whole country are going down the tube, so now it hits everybody.
Believe me, this is no picnic, but some people just really don't have much of a choice.
Me and myself, but I'm looking every day to get out of this situation, and I am.
Very, very shortly, I am.
God knows if I have to do whatever it takes to do, I will, and then when I get that opportunity,
whether it's, I've got connections out there that, you know, once they have the room, I
can move in their basement, or rent a room, $300 a month, no problem, and I'll just work
to move in there, here's my paycheck, as long as I've got sheetrocked over my head instead
of this file, I'll do whatever it takes.
It's a trite phrase, downward spiral, but it, there's no bottom to that one, there's
no bottom to that, and people suffering with depression, the more that you're do without,
or forced to do without, forced to not have, the worse you think of yourself, the less
you think of yourself, and it takes a long time for some people to climb back out of
that, and have the personal strength of character, et cetera, et cetera, whatever it was that
made them viable in the working world when they, when they were there.
It's a long climb back out once you, once you beat them down that far.
But right now I have about $0.16 to my name, but I'll, I'll manage, I'm a survivor, yeah.
