Ramero:
Writer/Rapper.
“I’m a writer. I’m writing some rap songs right now, for myself. I’m laying them down on some tracks. My brother-in-law has his own studio, hi-tech. He’s got everything: all the equalizers, the computer, everything you need to record. So I’m gonna do that, hopefully by mid-next year, I’ll have my demo.
So I’m practicing on that right now. I got three rap songs, already written down, I’m working on the other stuff. I’ve got ten to put onto my CD. You know what my stage name is? Nitrous 9-oh.”
Mixed Martial Artist.
“I was actually taught by a semi-professional in St. Louis, for about 2 years. So he taught me. But I get most of my training and knowledge from videos. I watch a lot of videos. UFC, MMA.”
Volunteer.
“I did volunteer work for Austin Area Food Bank. So now I just volunteer at Austin Club House; we’re about getting the food preparation for Thursday’s dinner. I like volunteering.”
Woodworker/Electronics.
“Doing woodwork, I like electronics too, I like putting wires together.”
“I’m not one to just sit around. Once you get to know me, I’m always doing something.”
***
Ramero was born in Monterey, Mexico—but practically as soon as he could breathe, his family move to Houston, Texas.
“I’m a full-blooded Mexican,” he laughed. “I was born there, I know a lot about Monterey, but I grew up in Houston. Ever since I was a newborn, an infant, a baby.”
After he completed high school, he moved on his own to Los Angeles in 1990. He lived there for two years before moving to Long Beach, the nearby coast city.
“It’s a real beautiful city, Long Beach. It’s beautiful city,” he said, wistful.
His next move came after a total stay of five years in California. By this time, he said, his older sister had moved from Houston to St. Louis, Missouri. In In 1995, she asked him to come up and help her with her start-up business. He packed his bags and headed north.
It was while working with his sister during this time that he first met his wife. They married simply and settled comfortably in Arnold, a city just south of St. Louis.
They bore and raised two daughters in the next twelve years, he said. But their relationship soured and ended in divorce in 2008.
“She kept the house when we divorced—the only thing I got out of the divorce was my car. I just wanted my car. I said you can have everything else but my car. She said fine you can have your car. So it was a pretty simple divorce. Everything went smoothly.”
He left quickly, heading back to Houston to visit his mom and sisters still living there. His mom had long remarried: Ramero avoided his stepdad. He explained that his mom had caught her new husband texting his ex-girlfriend.
“He said nothing happened, but I dunno. My mom believes him, and she’s still with him: she doesn’t want to let it go. And he apologized and everything, and he’s making up for it I guess. We all tell my mom, you need to leave him. But she loves him, I guess.”
After a short stay, he moved back up to St. Louis to be near his daughters.
He got a regular job for the first time.
“For two years I did machine operating. The last three years I got moved up the ladder to quality control inspector. So I just went around checking parts and giving breaks out. That’s all I did.”
He laughed, reminiscing. “Pretty much it was all just doing whatever the hell I wanted to while I worked. I could smoke a cigarette if I wanted to.”
He explained why. “I was always getting good with my boss. As long as he knows you’re doing everything the way he wants it done, he’s going to like you; he’s gonna try to keep you. So he kept me there.”
Finally, he itched for a change. In 2013, he moved to Austin and became homeless for the first time.
“The first I came here to Austin, I came to the homeless shelter and I signed up, and I got in. About a month later, once I knew the resources they had, what they could offer me, how they could help me out, I got onto case management.”
His case worker worked on finding him housing, he said. They visited two apartments, but he didn’t like them enough for their price.
“Before I went out to go get my own apartment, and go fork out about $900—cause that’s how much it takes to move into an apartment—I was like, well wait a minute, see if I can figure this out.”
Meanwhile, he took a full-time job and started saving his money. He sent a portion of his earnings to his mom still in Houston.
It was just recently that he found out about low-income housing.
“Cause about that time was when I first heard about [Community First Village]. Why don’t I sign up for low-income housing, maybe I can qualify for it. I didn’t know; there was only one way to find out: sign up for it.”
He registered for a spot in the village in January 2016. Even then, he said, there was a long list of names ahead of him. He’s been waiting since, and should hear back from the village organizers soon.
He’s visited to make sure he likes the environment. Indeed, he’s anticipating the move-in. “I’m gonna be getting into one of those little micro-homes. I like calling them a little cabin. It is a great community. I like it cause everything’s great; everything’s there.”
Meanwhile, he pursues his many hobbies. He spends two hours a day at the Perry-Castañeda Library in UT, reading, and using the computer to get caught up on news. And he nurses big aspirations.
Once he moves into his own place, he’s going back to school.
“I’m studying computer programming. I was going in for my associates in computer science, and I’ll go back and do that later. But right now I’m just gonna go for computer programming. Cause I want to get the license, the certificate. And then I’ll get my degree.”
He said he enjoys computer programming, despite its challenges.
“The harder stuff, like when you start getting into what computer science is really about, which is decoding, and encoding, that’s where it gets really difficult. Not anybody can learn something like that. You gotta be someone that’s got a lot of technical ability. and you’ve gotta be behind a computer for a long period of time.”
He plans on studying the subject because he has a business idea.
“I was going to start out with an environmental cleaning company, that does environmental cleaning solutions for either the government, for private entity or for public entity. But before that, it was going to be a recycling center. I immediately threw that out of the picture because there isn’t a whole lot of profit in recycling.
So then I got to thinking, let me think of something that I can do, that isn’t gonna take a lot more capital. I went online, and I started studying four, five different companies. And they’re small companies; they aren’t even a company for real. But they create apps.”
He said he sees a unique opportunity in app-making.
“There’s a gazillion apps out there; there’s probably gonna be a gazillion more apps. But people are diversified in the interest that they find in an app. If you’re using an app and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I think I like this, I’m gonna download this app onto my phone,’ it’s because it interested you.
That’s the trick in creating an app; you gotta have something that’s gonna interest. It’s not gonna interest everyone, but the market that you can touch, that’s the market you want.”
He’s thinking of building an app company, armed with his knowledge of computers. He’ll be the brains behind the project, he said, and try to hire the best programmers for the best value to do the coding.
Another aspiration? Following through on yet another hobby of his.
“Let’s say I rent out a little shop. I’d like to do what’s called light art; we take light strobes from different types of electronic equipment, put them together, and make light art out of it. Where they blink and do little designs and stuff.”
He first got the idea from an uncle, he said.
“He’d take a bunch of old motherboards and chips and stuff, and would solder them and put them together, lay out the platform and everything and put the lights up. He had one like a rainbow that would come up in the air and come down with all the colors. Can you imagine seeing that with the lights turned off? He even managed to put stuff in picture frames, and things would be going off in different sequences.”
He looked wistful, remembering this, thinking of all the things he wants to do.
“I wish I’d have been like this about 10 years ago. I mean, it’s never too late; I’m still young. But I definitely like to stay busy, more now than ever.”
He can’t really begin pursuing his plans until he moves into his micro-home, he said. And he admitted that even this was his choice.
“The thing is, I don’t really have to be homeless. I chose to be homeless because I’m tired of paying $1100 in rent. Cause if I’m gonna live somewhere I’m not gonna live in some shabby apartment—I’m gonna live in a nice neighborhood. If I’m gonna pay $1100, I’m gonna live in a nice neighborhood.”
Since he first became homeless, he said, his mom has continually asked him to come home to Houston and stay with her. She owns three small homes on her property and rents them out—one of them was occupied by a single man. She offered to ask the tenant to move out with a few weeks notice, and to give the space to Ramero instead.
But he rejected the proposal multiple times.
“I can’t live around my mom,” he explained. He quickly added that they have a deep, loving relationship. But he’d rather live independently.
“I’m out here because I know I can make it on my own. I don’t need my mom to help me out; she’s helped me out a lot, she still offers to help me. And I told her no mom, I’m ok, I’m fine, I don’t need nothing.”
He isn’t working right now, because he lost his IDs at a party and is waiting for replacements, he said. But he’s looking forward at things to come.
“So it’s gonna be a process, but I know I’ll get it. Just takes a lot of perseverance. Perseverance is the word I like to use: if you want it bad enough, you’re going to get it.”