Mario & Marilyn

Marilyn, 22, Puerto Rico Mario, 28, Private sanitation worker. Indoor graffiti artist. Born in El Salvador, lived all over North & South America. What’s your story? About 6 months ago I had everything. I had my apartment, a brand new car, money to spare, a 64 inch TV, I had everything, Last thing I ever thought was being in the situation I am now – no money, no cigarettes, trying to pick up cigarettes from floor every now and then. Before if I saw a homeless person I used to say “get a job, you have hands, you can work!” For me, homeless just described a person who smelled, who’s a dog who’s always begging money, away from civilized people, not worthy, a parasite. Don’t know how else to break it to you. If I would see a person like me or him, even if he’s homeless and I’m working I would tell him, bro, get a fucking job! That’s how I saw people, but that’s not how people wanted to be seen. To be disrespectful, to judge people – that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. My first thought was “they can work.” but now I’m living their life. 6 months ago I had a life. Now I don’t have a life. What happened? I lost my job. We had an apartment, I was eating sushi every week, spending $2000 dollar on dinner in one night. Some people wait their whole life to make that happen. But I want to live today, tomorrow, next week… the Bible says you’ll have eternal life, but to me that’s in 80 years. What about tomorrow, today? That’s what I’m looking for. I lost my job and I didn’t collect unemployment because they promised me I’d get my job back, I worked for a private sanitation company in Manhattan for about $1000/week after taxes, take home. So I used the money I’d saved for 4-5 years – I spent a lot because I was using illegal drugs, and that was my downfall. I don’t use heroin or coke, I don’t use crack, but I bought ounces of weed. And weed is the last thing people will say “it’s not addictive”. They see heroin, PCP, from A to Z people use nowadays. I just used marijuana, smoked an ounce a day. Yeah, that’s a lot. But I don’t know… I had it good but I had it bad. I was working 7 days a week, sometimes the whole month, sometimes I got one day a month to spend some time with my wife. Anything my wife wanted I would give her. She would tell me I need a new pair of shoes, I would say okay, I’ll get them tomorrow. Simple as that. When you’ve worked for so many years to get out of the streets, it’s hard to come back to it. I promised her about 5 years ago that we wouldn’t be in this situation again, and here we are again. It’s heartbreaking for me. It’s just hard. When we first met, five years ago, we were in this situation before. We met on the first day of school – East 96th – the School of Cooperative Technical Education. It was her first day and my first day, and 3 hours later we were already dating, a day later we decided to get together, that’s it. And we’ve been together ever since. We just went to see what time will tell. What’s happening now? Now I’m staying in the [assessment] shelter – 1938 Webster Ave in East Tremont. When people kept telling me if you become homeless and you make $30K, $60K a year, they’ll help you out, at least give you a room or Section 8 or something, it sounded a little easier. They didn’t give you the details or explain how things work. [We’re not eligible for long-term shelter, because we can’t provide documentation of our previous addresses.] The problem is, every time we’d rented an apartment, we hadn’t done it legally. It was more like money for the super, not the owner. It didn’t bother me then, because I had a roof over our head, I had food. We were happy paying the super because we didn’t pay cable, we didn’t pay gas, water, laundry, etc. You can’t beat that. But if I had known then what I know now, I would’ve done differently. But when we went to the [assessment shelter] on 1st Ave. & 29th St., we had to get proof of every single place we’d been living. But in 2005 we moved 10 times that year. How can you get proof of that? I’d been living in Brooklyn, the Bronx, NJ, LI, PA, Washington DC, Mississippi, Iowa, I moved back to my country, came back here, then moved to LA… I was a troublemaker when I was younger, so I… ended up in jail for things I regret now. I haven’t done it anymore, paid my debt to society, 10 years. But other than that, we don’t want people to feel pity for us. Some people come to these places to pass the day, they want the week to be over. Some people like how they live homeless. Some people don’t care how they live. I don’t want to be here, period. I’m not working but it’s not permanent. It’s temporary, maybe for a month or two months. Depends on the job agency. I’m trying to fix my social life, settle my bills, and things that I have to fix up in my life. I’m dead broke. I need about $5K to get my life together, fix up my license, because I used to work driving garbage trucks. But I don’t have the money to fix my life. If I had that, I could fix that and in a month I’d be back to where I was. Out of so many people that I know, and so many people that know me already in the job that I was doing – they only know that I quit. They don’t know the whole story. I’m the kind of guy who will tell some of the story to one, another part of the story to another. The only one who knows the whole me is my wife. I’m homeless and I don’t want them to know. This is my problem, not theirs. What’s it like around the shelter? If I could find housing, or anything like an a apartment lottery that would help me out… staying in shelters is messed up. They’ll tell you the time to get in, the time to get out, when you come in you can’t get out. It’s like jail. There, you have to get out before 10am, you can come back after 2 int eh afternoon, and you have to be inside before 11pm. If you don’t bring a good proof or maybe a letter from the hospital, they’ll kick you out and let you stay outside. And if you do it like twice they’ll kick you out for good. And if you don’t get out in the morning at the time they tell you, they’ll kick you out. It’s not beautiful and pink and flowers like they tell you. It’s hard, it’s messed up, it’s crazy, it’s bullshit. The caseworkers don’t explain a thing. They only have attitude for everything. They give you toilet paper every Thursday – one roll for 2 people. The shelter that we’re staying, there are people there for different problems, on crack, on drugs. I’m not trying to stay there for 6 months. We’ve been there 25 days. I’m not trying to stay there for 3 months more. If they could let me stay for 2 months more, I could get a job and get out of this THING because I’m going insane. There are people there who have been there for 10 years, maybe they love it. But it’s not how I see my life. If I have kids, I don’t want them going in there. I’m working now at a construction temp agency, but I get like $7.50/hr, working about 12 hours – midnight to 12pm. I have to get a letter from the job saying I’m going to work Monday through Friday from this time to that time, and once I bring that letter to the shelters, I can just go inside and get some sleep in the city. Otherwise they say “you were absent, you and your wife will have to go, no exceptions.” It’s already the end of summer, beginning of fall. In a few months it’s going to be winter, cold, all type of things. I’m not staying there so they can kick me out at 10 in the morning and I can freeze my ass. So I’m trying to make a change now. The shelter is bad. They see homeless people and don’t respect them. I love to work. I’m used to working 7 days a week. I’m a machine. Work, home, work, home, that’s it. All the going out, that’s my wife’s idea. Myself is more… outside of everybody. I don’t go out, I don’t talk to that many people. I didn’t talk to anybody in the department where I was hired for 5 years. Everyone’s different in a way, and that’s me. FOR INFO ON PICTURE THE HOMELESS'S CAMPAIGN TO ENSURE THAT REAL HOUSING AND REAL JOBS ARE DEVELOPED FOR HOMELESS NEW YORKERS: http://www.picturethehomeless.org/housing