Some quick calculations done my Freshman year showed me that if I gave 50 cents to everyone who asked for change, I would quickly go broke.
In three years of living here, it struck me that Albuquerque seems to have a much larger homeless population than other cities. So I decided to figure out if this is true and, if so, why.
The following piece is the first part of a new ongoing series, Without A Roof, that will investigate homelessness in Albuquerque.
The first part of the series is a personal examination of one man’s life. The goal is to paint a picture of what life is like without a place to live.
Johnny is 43 years old and homeless. He’s been homeless “10, 14 years, maybe,” since his mother died.
He gave a simple reason for being homeless: He doesn’t know how to do anything else. He said he tried to work, but couldn’t keep a job.
“I never really had a job. I had two part-time jobs, but they didn’t like me. One of ‘em, I only lasted four days. One I only lasted one day. I was painting,” he said. “People don’t see what I do as work, but it’s work. All the walking, talking. No sleep.”
He didn’t go to college, or even graduate from high school, but he earned his GED after dropping out of high school. He used to carry the certificate with him everywhere, but he no longer has a copy.
“I dropped out in the 10th grade. Then I got my GED at TVI, when it was still TVI, not CNM. But I don’t have it with me, they took it from me. When I got beat up, all my stuff got tooken,” Johnny said. He also lost his birth certificate in the attack.
Selling drugs (well, marijuana anyway) was a good source of income for Johnny until he was attacked and his drugs were stolen. Now it’s too dangerous, he said.
“I made a lot of money selling pot, till I got shot in the leg,” Johnny said. “This guy had beat me up twice before, but I didn’t have my glasses. I’m glad that guy shot me, now. Back then, I would have shot him, but then I’d be in trouble.”
Johnny repeatedly worries aloud that the police will read this article and use it against him, so, to be clear — today, Johnny said he does not sell or use drugs.
It’s important for him to make this clear, because he’s been in jail more times than he can count.
“I haven’t been to jail for going on five months. No tickets. Record for me,” he said.
He has a negative view of most cops — “There’s very few good cops. There’s more that abuse the badge” — but he said he respects “the good ones.”
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“If a cop beats up a homeless, they’ll get away with it. I was beat up, roughed up three times by cops. One guy filmed it, but I let it go. I didn’t want to get killed. Because I heard of a homeless guy, won a settlement against cops. And later on, the cops killed him,” Johnny said.
I long suspected that the University area has more homeless people than other parts of town because students are more sympathetic to the homeless, and Johnny (an unscientific study group, to be sure) more or less confirms this for me.
“The college kids are more cool. Other people can be mean. Because there’s a lot of mean people out there. The people with money, they won’t give you nothing, but poor people, they’ll give you their last money, cause they know how it is. They’ve been through it, they feel for you,” he said.
Unfortunately for Johnny, he’s now banned from campus.
“I enjoy talking with kids like you, you know,” he said. “But now if I go to campus, I go to jail if I set foot on it. I haven’t been there for, like, eight years. I’ve never even seen the new SUB. I remember the old one.”
He says his favorite pastime is reading, but he only has access to books when he’s in jail. It’s hard to see why he’s living like this until I ask him about politics — his political ideas suggest maybe there’s something stranger going on in his mind than I thought.
“Me, I’m like anti-government. I shouldn’t say that, you know. But I don’t like what they’re doing. They do a lot of crazy stuff, you know,” he said.
But he continues: “They tried to make the Navy men invisible, so the enemy couldn’t see ‘em. And then they tell ‘em they can vanish from one point to another then
reappear. First they experiment on animals and then the people. Half their body is invisible, they can’t survive that. They do a lot of crazy stuff,” he said.
Later he says, “I heard him yell at me, but I wasn’t sure if he was real at first, you know. Sometimes you hear those voices.”
Johnny said he’s here for a reason and that his life is this way because God has a plan for him. But that doesn’t mean he’s without regrets.
“I wish I would’ve graduated. I would’ve…” He pauses, searching for the phrase. “I would’ve not been this way.”
