Josh describes barriers to housing
SAN DIEGO - It’s just after 11 a.m. as Josh sits on the edge of a parking lot near Lake Murray where he slept the night before. A multitude of conversations from a bustling coffee shop echo behind him as he sits quietly in his own thoughts.
Josh, 40, has been unhoused for the last six months. He spoke about some of the barriers he’s experienced in trying to find shelter.
“So what I saw was they take women and children, put them in motel rooms, and then the men if they were in a car, they couldn’t come in because they were considered sheltered,” he said.
After experiencing some setbacks, Josh lost his house on June Lake Drive. This is the first time in his life that he hasn’t had a job after serving our country and working as a first responder, something the public isn’t aware of before passing judgements.
“I have a degree, I was a Marine, I was a firefighter, an EMT and like I said, I’ve been out here for six months and you know, half the time it’s not anything that I could control,” he said. “I could have been a little more proactive but I’m also going through stuff at home. I’m going through a divorce, so I’ve got all this shit going on. Nobody know any of that, but they walk by and they say, ‘you’re a piece of shit.’”
Even with the help of VA services, Josh has been put through the ringer when it comes to getting into a shelter or finding housing. He also said that many of the shelters aren’t great environments to be in.
“So I went to one, I got there and they said, ‘No we can’t take you,’ after they said, ‘come on down.’ And they accepted me because they got that email. So I go to another one and all the men are put into a barracks type situation,” he said. “So you’ve got drug addicts, sick people, you know mentally unstable, all crammed together. It is a freaking nightmare.”
Inside the the Alpha Project shelter, October 5, 2019. Photo by Matt Hoffman, KPBS.
In Josh’s opinion, having his own individual tiny home unit to stay in before transitioning to permanent housing would be helpful.
“My friend, he’s not my friend, more of an acquaintance, but my wife’s friend I’ll say, he actually builds those tiny homes and we talked about it, it would be perfect,” he said.
From his perspective, there are certain measures that need to be addressed for the tiny homes to work though.
“So you know, if you’re gonna stick them in these nice little homes, you want to make sure they’re being taken care of so the next person can use them and that they don’t stay in them forever,” he said.
Homelessness is a complex, humanitarian crisis. That means many of the solutions are going to be complex and come with their own challenges. But that doesn’t mean they can’t work.
“I would want one and I would take care of it, yeah,” he said. “I think someone could come along with $50 million, and like Amazon sells them now, prefab tiny home for 17 grand, you could end homelessness.”
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By Jeremy Burton