Meeting Mr. Brooks was the turning point on my journey out of homelessness. Shortly after being assigned a case manager with Volunteers of America, I was moved from the dorm I’d been staying in. I’d been in B dorm most of the time in the shelter, but after a brief meeting with my Veterans’ Group leader, John, I was moved to E dorm. E dorm was the homeless shelter equivalent of the “good neighborhood.” Whereas B dorm was a large bay-style dorm with no real privacy, E dorm’s major selling point was the modicum of privacy provided by the high cement partitions separating the bunks into pairs. In addition to the privacy, E dorm boasted outlets between each pair of bunks, meaning I only had to share the outlet next to my bed with one other man. Each pair of bunks was further separated by a pair of wooden dressers. With one dresser facing each bed, there was the pretense of having one’s own “room.” It wasn’t much, but after having spent two months sharing space with a few dozen other men, it felt like fucking Shangri-La.
I’d settled into a routine, living in the shelter and working at News of the World Café. I’d become accustomed to living within the restrictions and requirements of residence in the South Wilmington Street Shelter. I planned my evenings so that I was back at the shelter in time to get in before curfew. As I started my approach to the shelter, I’d start rearranging my belongings, making sure to clear my pockets of change and loose debris that would slow down the inspection of my bag and person when I reentered. Moving into E dorm changed a lot more than I might have expected. The first thing I discovered was that they turned out the lights in E dorm. In the other dorms, there was always a light going. There was a light close to the entrance, and the lights in the bathroom were always burning brightly. A lot of guys had to cover their eyes with tee shirts or other homemade sleep masks. That wasn’t an issue in E dorm. Every night promptly at 9, they turned out the lights. All of the lights. On more than a few occasions, I wasn’t ready for lights-out and literally couldn’t see my surroundings well enough to get undressed for bed. One of my first E dorm purchases was a clip on light designed to be attached to the bill of a baseball cap.
The second thing I noticed was the increased freedom the residents of E dorm enjoyed. Since the dorm was reserved for those closest to moving out of the shelter, the staff gave them wide latitude. I’m sure it was because they figured anyone with their stuff together enough to live in E dorm probably wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. And for the most part, they were right.
The new sense of freedom motivated me even more. Being in the “good” part of the shelter was a tantalizing sample of what real life would be like once I’d moved out. At times, I would even forget that the shelter was what I was referring to when I’d slip and say something about “going home” after work. I never wanted to think of the shelter as home, and made it a point to avoid referring to it as such. I didn’t want to become one of the men for whom that was enough. I never wanted to look at it as my home because I never intended to spend that much time there. The steady paycheck from News of the World Café, as well as the help from VoA assured me that I truly wouldn’t be spending a lot of time there.
After being approved for assistance by my VoA case manager, I started looking for a place to stay. Before even becoming homeless, I’d been considering finding a rooming house. I liked the idea of renting, and I wanted to live in a house with other people without necessarily having to be best friends with them. I can be a loner at times, and I know that I function best when I have the ability to withdraw and be alone for a while when needed. Also, rental prices in the downtown area when I wanted to live were astronomical, and a rooming house would be the only way I’d ever be able to afford to live as close to downtown as I wanted.
For a week, I looked at room after room in rental property after rental property. I was starting to feel like Goldilocks: this one was too big, that one too small; this one too expensive, that one too far from work. I was starting to fear that I’d never find anything that worked when I ran across an ad on an online classifieds page. They were asking for $375 a month for what was (very accurately) described as a small room in a subdivided house managed by a real estate agency. When I showed up to take a look at it, there was another prospective resident there to see a vacant room.
She was interested in one of the larger (read, “more expensive”) units, but we all toured the entire house together. The room I was interested in was so small that the three of us, the real estate agent, the other prospect, and I—couldn’t all fit into the room at the same time. There was a twin mattress on the floor and a three-legged chair propped precariously against the wall. The other prospect and I took turns looking around the dismal room with the dim lighting and poorly painted walls. I looked down at the stained and filthy orange carpeting, and I knew. This was going to be my home.
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