Alex was born in Chicago in 1966, but almost immediately was given up for adoption and moved to Austin with his new foster family.
He said they took good care of him, raising him in the Catholic faith—but he soon was disaffected by the religion.
“They adopted me, they gave me a big, wonderful, beautiful life, and I respect them. But I don’t believe in Catholic. There’s just too many different things that I see that doesn’t fall into the Bible.”
What prompted his eventual rejection of Catholicism was a Sunday Mass when he was fifteen, he said, where the hypocrisy of the faith’s adherents was glaringly revealed.
“Everybody went into the church, and we say we serve the Lord Jesus Christ, eat the bread, yadah yadah. But we come out and in the parking lot, they’re drinking beer and doing drugs and smoking cigarettes! People are on their knees, crying, and they come out of the house of God, and they’re like ‘Have a beer, have a beer!’ That’s when I said no, this is not for me. I realized, there’s gotta be a better church out there.”
He was attending Round Rock High School, and was first introduced to Christianity by his girlfriend in his senior year, he said.
“She was 21 years older than me. She was a lawyer, here in Austin. And she was married to a chief police officer. I used to work out, I was athletic. And we fell in love with each other.”
He met her through his best friend, he said—she was his mom. They were together for seven years, he said, continuing their relationship through his graduation. He said that he’s extremely grateful for her help with his career path and her spiritual guidance.
“She got me into Capitol City Trade and Technical School, on Riverside. I went there for three and a half years, graduated, a certified mechanic on computers. She showed me a lot about the Bible, and Christianity, and Catholics and all these different religions. Then she showed me the difference, and said, ‘You do what you wanna do.’”
He chose Christianity at age 21.
“I realized, wow, this is it. There’s no smoking, there’s no drugs, there’s not fighting, there’s no ambition, there’s nothing like that. I said awesome, this is what I like.”
However, he was involved in gang activity and drugs at the same time, he said.
“I used to do a lot of fights and lot of gangs, out here on the streets, back in the 80s, 90s. And I got sent to prison for thirty years. I did fifteen out of the thirty. I went in in 1994, October the 23rd, and I got out 2009, December the 24th.”
He said he actually appreciated the time in prison. He was able to go in with a change-positive attitude, and come out with a new resolve.
“A lot of people say penitentiary isn’t good. It is good. It’s how you take it. It’s supposed to be a rehabilitation. If you take the rehabilitation, you’re changed. But if you go in there, and whatever you do out here you keep on doing in there, you’re never going to get rehabilitated. You’re always going to be the same thug, the same liar, the same cheater. You’re going to become a pathological liar. But if you change your ways, you can come a long ways.”
When his fifteen years were up, he almost immediately became homeless. He’s been without housing ever since, but the beginning of it was especially tough, he said.
“I was scared. I didn’t know nothin’ about this. I didn’t know what the hell you do, who do you hang around with, who do you talk to, where do you sleep at, where do you eat, where do you shower. I didn’t know nothin’. It took me almost a year and a half to know everything that’s going on here.”
This is his seventh year experiencing homelessness, but he despises the lifestyle as vehemently as ever.
“It’s crazy. I don’t recommend it to nobody. I hope nobody gets into this same position. Because it’s a horrible life. It’s horrible, it’s depressing, it’s sad. It’s just tormenting. Because at nighttime, you don’t know where to sleep, the cops will come move you. Or you don’t know if you want to fall asleep because somebody will rob you, kick you in the face, or somebody could come and stab you. You don’t know. Somebody would come kick me in the face, and I wouldn’t know why. So you have to stay alert, 24/7.”
He held a job at a car wash for several years, he said, but was recently laid off—he’s developed arthritis in both knees, and another condition that causes his lower legs to swell painfully.
“Sometimes I can’t even sleep because my leg, it hurts so much. In the morning when I wake up, my legs are like cantaloupes. So big, so swollen. Hurts more than anything. I got my medication, but it’s getting so bad that the medication ain’t helping me no more.”
He applied for disability coverage under Social Security, but for the meantime, he can’t work legally.
“Disability won’t let me work. It’s gonna take about one year, two years to get my disability.”
But in the meantime?
“I go to corners, or to Home Depot. I stand there. They won’t let me work, because they know I’m sick, but they’ll say, you can work two, three hours, I’ll give you thirty, forty bucks, Alex. Him right there?” (He pointed to a gas station across the street). “I got a job tonight with him. There’s a fence behind that store, and he wants me to go power-wash the fence. He’ll give me thirty dollars. That’s how I cope.”
Most of his earnings go towards making his monthly payment on a major blessing he has: a car.
“It took me two and half years on the streets to get my car. But I did it, I got it. Kia gave me a chance, opened doors for me. Now I got my little white car.”
He said ever since he obtained the car in early 2015, it’s been his safe haven. He’s able to sleep there in relative safety, store everything extra sandwiches and water, and lock up his valuables.
In his car, he’s somewhat sheltered from the horrors and danger of living in the open, he said.
“But it’s dangerous out here—especially for women, it’s dangerous out here. Because there’s guys who don’t care about themselves, don’t care about their women, don’t care about nobody around their area: they’ll hurt you, they’ll steal you, they’ll rape you if they have to. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen men out here hittin’ women.”
Regularly, he said, he witnesses everything from friends luring friends into traps, robbing them, and beating them up—to men preying on women.
“I see people come up to a girl, give her marijuana or a cigarette, and they screw ’em. Have sex with them. It’s crazy. I see it out there, all the time. Every day, 24/7. I see it all day long. My car’s parked over there, it could be 2, 3 o’clock in the morning, and I’ll see people having sex out there. In the middle of the street.”
He has a girlfriend, he said, who has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and doesn’t want her out in this environment.
“She was on the streets when I met her, and now we’re going on four years together. She’s with her sister right now. I can’t have her out here, it’s very sad, it’s lonely, it’s depressing. I can’t have her sleep in my car. We did it for three and a half year, sleeping in the car. But I don’t keep her with me out here. It’s dangerous out here. She’s very sweet, very respectable.”
HYGIENE IS VERY IMPORTANT OUT HERE. AND EIGHTY-FIVE, NINETY PERCENT OF THESE PEOPLE OUT HERE, THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE HYGIENE.
He said it’s a challenge to support her sometimes.
“[She’s a] Very clean, hygiene person. Talk about a freak hygiene person. Girl can’t go without her sanitizer, nope, she would die if she didn’t have it. But she’s got OCD. I have to have a lot more patience—even though she’s in the wrong, I have to tell her she’s in the right. Cause they get offended in the blink of an eye. So I have to be careful what I say to her.”
More so, her OCD has caused herself problems, he said.
“When you have the OCD thing, you can’t hold a job well. Because you want everything so perfect at your time, at your pace. And you can’t work at somebody else’s pace. So that’s why she can’t hold a job. It affects her. She’s tried but it affects her.”
His relationship with her has partly informed his own desire for cleanliness, he said.
“Hygiene is very important out here. And eighty-five, ninety percent of these people out here, they don’t care about the hygiene. And that’s very important, because once your body gets an infection, you’re in trouble! It’s not that easy to get that infection out of there!
There’s one thing about being homeless, and there’s a thing about taking care of yourself while you’re homeless. Don’t let yourself go, just because you’re homeless. You’re human, you got two feet, you got two hands, you can move, and you can clean yourself. You can do it, but you gotta want it. Nothing’s coming to you hands free, you gotta go get it.”
The death of his brother a month and a half ago also prompts his hygiene.
“He was homeless too. He drank too much alcohol, did too much drugs. And he died—his kidneys and his liver just gave away. It happens. If you want to succeed in this world, you have to be sure of yourself. First you gotta take care of yourself, and worry about the world later. You come first. Cause if you try and take care of the world and you don’t take care of yourself, you’re gone. And they gonna keep on rolling, and you’re gone.”
His method:
“I go take a shower, then I go find me a lot of pennies and nickels—whatever I can find—and I go wash my clothes. I go to this lady on Manor Road, and she lets me wash her clothes. She gives me a little bottle of detergent, free, so I put soap in my clothes and wash it over there.”
(I had no clue he was homeless when I met him.)
He says his faith has been a driving force for him pushing forward. One example of God’s mercy—right after he lost his job at the car wash:
“I didn’t have my car payment. I didn’t have it at all, I didn’t have it. I had no money. I was at my car, saying, ‘Here I go. Back on the streets, no car, I have to walk around my legs while my backpack’s on my back, and struggle again.’ I said, ‘God, you know what? I believeth in You, I always have. If you want me to continue using this car that you’re loaning me—cause nothin’ in this world is ours, you’re just letting us use it to get around—if you want to keep on loaning me that car, I want to keep it.’
So I called up the bank, I said, ‘This is Alex, I’m sorry, I just fought for disability, my job just let me off because of my sickness of my knees, and I’m going to run a little behind on my car payment.’
‘Ok, hold on, Mr. D’.
I could hear him at the computer. They said my bill was paid. My cardinal was paid. I’m like, what? They said, ‘We have a check here for your car payment, but it doesn’t have the name of the person. But somebody paid your car rent.’ I was like, ‘Oh wow, thank you!’ It was a blessing. I was really shocked. Nobody knows me, nobody has a reason to pay what doesn’t belong to them. They’ll say, ‘It’s his car, let him pay for it.’ Somebody paid it, but I know it was Him.”
Looking forward, he is supposed to go to the Community Care center at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless in two weeks. They’re supposed to refer him to an orthopedic center to be examined and eventually have surgery on his legs—but for one problem.
“They said, ‘You can’t sleep in your car. Once your surgery’s done, you gotta be in a bed. You can’t be in you car, because you’re going to have screws and stuff in your knees, so you gotta be laying in a bed.’ I said, ‘Well I don’t have one.’ They said, ‘We have to find you one. If you don’t have a place to stay, we can’t give you surgery.’ So I have to find somewhere, I don’t know where. I have to find somewhere where I can tell them I’m going to stay at this place.”
Otherwise, he’ll continue a cycle of checking into the Breckenridge Hospital weekly for emergency IV fluid drains, and obtaining medicine that’d rapidly decreasing in effectiveness. He’ll continue finding jobs to earn just enough to cover his car payments, caring for his girlfriend, and staying clean, while his leg gets worse and worse.
I wish him luck.