There are a lot of homeless people who help each other out – and one time somebody asked Sam why he gave two dollars he had just gotten to one of his friends looking for cash. “He needed a hamburger,” he said. Sam explained that his buddy was very hungry… so Sam immediately gave him the money.
Being hungry was a big theme in the interview I conducted with Sam.
He said he is always hungry, always hoping to get a slice of pizza or some chicken nuggets. “Anything that is meat, is hot, is real food—that’s what I am always hoping for,” he says.
Sam has been homeless for over a year. He lost his job, and he is still looking for another one. He needs “just a few more damn credits” to get his college degree, has no money, is not working, and is not going to take out “one of those f#@king loans.”
Sam says people do not believe he is homeless. They say things like, “I’m not going to give you money because I don’t believe you are homeless… you don’t look homeless… you are too well-dressed to be homeless…” He says he gets this nonsense a lot.
He also gets lectured to. He has heard a lot of “BS” by being near busy places like the CTA stations. “Everybody seems to think I need their advice.” Apparently, he has been told he is “not very serious about getting a place to live.”
Sam is a healthy guy—played sports in high school and college. When his father died three years ago, that left him completely alone. His mother, and an older brother, were killed in a car wreck several years ago. He has no cousins or other family around that he knows about. He thinks he has relatives in Missouri with the same last name, but so far he has not located anybody. “They are not on Facebook and not in a phone book,” he jokes. He has looked for them online for a year now.
Like most homeless people I have interviewed, Sam hates the night. He confides, “getting through one more f#@king night is a huge achievement.” He says he always fears getting killed or robbed when sleeping outdoors or on the train. “
“If I can make it through one more night, I am good.” Sam stressed that all the other homeless people he knows dread nightfall. They dread it because safety “goes out the window,” he whispers. To Sam and a lot of other homeless people, the night is dangerous. Police do not always seem very supportive or understanding, are more of a nuisance to them than anything.
While many of his comments have to do with hunger, it is not all about food. (I used hunger as a theme, once I saw it coming up in my notes and in his statements. I code everything by hand, and saw “hunger, hungry, starving, etc.” recur…)
Sam is also hungry for his regular life to get going again. He wants to finish college, get a good job, get a place to live, meet a girl, and go with her on a vacation. I ask him where, and he does not know. “Somewhere with a beach,” he laughs. He tells me he is embarrassed… not even knowing where he would go on a vacation. He feels being homeless makes his life so different he does not know a lot of things anymore.
“Other than lots of fresh air,” he does not know what homeless people have. He feels homeless people lose so much and that people do not realize this.
“Homeless people lose possessions, paperwork, stashes of cash, photos, and of course their dignity!” he tells me. “Many of them lose their sanity, and they lose their drive to keep going and get back to ‘the real world’ or something like it.” Sam dreams about having a place to live all the time. He says it is almost all he can think about.
Because rents are so incredibly high in Chicago, he has tried to find a friend he can rent a room from—even a garage space to sleep in during the summer. He says he does not care where he stays, as long as it is safe, and of course dry. He hates the seemingly endless rain in Chicago. He says this year it is like trying to live in a monsoon.
Sam is giving his current job search until July 1st. Then he plans to try to get “any f#@king job he can find.” Then he will start saving up money for rooms and spots to sleep in, at least. He has some of his possessions at a friend’s house and some of his clothes nearby in a friend’s storage locker.
He says he is really a cook, and almost a manager before things “went to hell” where he was working. There were some rumors he had said something inappropriate to a customer in the restaurant he was working in “where nobody sane would ever want to work.” He says there were some rumors of people getting fired. He even stayed late to take care of some other employees’ duties and only at the end of that long day he was finally called in by his boss.
He got fired but only after doing all that extra work, with no paperwork, and with no explanation. He said it could have been a real problem, but he was sure he would have a job within the week. That did not happen, however, and at the end of the month when it was time to renew the lease with his two room mates, he was out of cash. They wouldn’t lend him his part of the rent and higher deposit (the rent went up $150 for the three of them) and he faced the new chapter of not having a place to live.
Next, he was out of hope. With only a few bucks in his pocket, he started sleeping on the train. Sam says he tried not to feel too down. He tried to keep it together. One day, he felt so depressed. He felt abandoned.
“At the age of 24, I was sitting in the Burger King bathroom crying like a baby!” he reveals. “I was a grown man without a plan. I didn’t know what to do. I had nobody to hold me. I had no money. I couldn’t even get a Whopper, but I could smell all the food in the place being cooked.” He went out and stood in the parking lot and just started asking “random kids” for money. After a few minutes, he had over $30 and he bought his Whopper.
From there, he started the difficult journey at dusk to hang around the train station. He admits that day made him see life would suddenly be different.
“I was a cocky little a##hole up to that point.” He realized he was now an adult. He would go around, asking for money, selling a little weed, and getting donations in the form of burgers and fries on the corner near Burger King.
He says he is “just another hungry kid” who needs a break, needs to move forward. He says he is always starving and always planning how he can get more food later. He says he got spoiled working in a restaurant because there is food everywhere. “We got free meals, and we could snack on whole dinners when we took the buffet down at night.” He says he enjoyed having half a dozen pieces of baked chicken to take home or a couple pizzas. It is apparently true that at the end of the day food just gets thrown out.
Sam has applied for many full-time jobs in restaurants but nothing is happening. Although he constantly hears “everybody is hiring” that seems to not really be the case. He does not know what his ex-boss is saying about him, and he has trouble getting interviews for manager because he does not have much experience, he thinks. Also, he has not finished that college degree, another challenge he has to meet to move on.
I make an agreement with Sam when he mentions the college degree again. I tell him that I will help him with the application and transcripts, plus pay the fees he needs to pay so that he can apply to both NEIU and (to go back to) UIC to complete his degree in Psychology. He needs to get the degree handled so that he can move on in management, cooking, and life. But he must get serious and get me the paperwork I need to make all this happen.
The applications need to be submitted immediately. He needs to attend whichever one accepts him and we have to work on the applications this weekend. I will help him.
Sam is surprised when I say this. He agrees and starts to cry a little. I tell him, he can help me in the future by cooking me some kick-ass dinners. He laughs. He agrees to the deal.
Sam is going to make it. He is going to keep his dignity. He is going to move forward. Someday, Sam will have a place to live. And he will also have something to eat.