Opinion: How 3 Angelenos slipped all too easily into the ranks of the unhoused (via latimesopinion )
Many of us can’t imagine being homeless. It’s dangerously common to think of unhoused people as being in a separate category from the rest of us, leading lives we could never lead. But all it takes is an “unraveling” before our lives “fall apart.”
“One day, in Venice, I saw this guy, high, mouthing off to other people,” Patrick said. “I looked at him and thought, I can’t stand him! Then I realized — I was the same. I quit that week.” After the Air Force, I had lots of jobs, good jobs, career-type jobs. I was putting in heating and air systems, and managing a warehouse for Microstar. At one point I was moving furniture cross country. Then I met a girl, and we had a kid together, a son. When I was with the moving company, I kept missing Christmas and his birthday. So I quit.
My son? He’s doing well. He’s an assistant manager at a Petco in Nevada. He knows where I am — he knows everything about me; I keep no secrets from him. But he can’t help me now because his mom is also homeless and she’s sleeping on his couch. I have a granddaughter I haven’t met yet.My name is Shane, and I’m 52 years old. I grew up in Venice and Mar Vista. I went to Mark Twain Middle School, to Venice High. I rode BMX bikes. We made tracks on the empty lots. I went surfing at the beach.
We had a daughter, who’s now 27. She called to tell me about the accident: “Mom’s been in an accident.” The last thing I thought was that she could be dead. I thought, OK, a car accident — maybe a fractured wrist or something of that nature, something she could recover from. “I walk around all day thinking about how to get out of this situation and why the agencies always give us the runaround,” Crystal said.
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