Robert’s Story
Robert passed away at the end of October 2023 due to complications with lung cancer. His family and friends were by his side.
Robert was a scholar and highly intelligent. He mastered math and physics and dabbled in quantum mechanics. He earned a mechanical engineering degree in his later years and spent a year traveling the world, all the while updating his family and friends via email when he would reach a new destination like Tibet or Italy. Robert was a gifted musician and played in a band with friends, and would have a weekly jam session at the skilled nursing facility Hearts and Hands. Robert was humble and kind, soft spoken and confident.
Robert was in the Recuperative Care Center at Housing Matters for 9 months and created a family atmosphere in House 3 with the “Friday family Feast”. Robert was an accomplished chef and a friend shared the beautiful story of how everyone in the house trusted each other and left their doors open. They shared a meal every Friday and enjoyed each other’s company and rooted for each other in times of hardship. Robert had started an endearing relationship with another resident and she was at his bedside those final days. Robert used to say that you have to enjoy the little moments in everyday life, that first morning cup of coffee, the way the flowers bloomed in spring, and the simplicity of a good sandwich. Robert would often say, “what is your sandwich moment?” It is so important, especially through times of hardship, to remember that those sandwich moments are all around us. What is your sandwich today?
I lost housing in 2017 after living in Santa Cruz for some time. I was staying in a friend’s garage and lived in a motorhome for a couple of years. In 2019, a good friend of mine, who was also my landlord, died. That is when I really lost my housing. I would go to the Salvation Army on Laurel Street and would take the bus up to the shelter at night, sleep there, and then take the bus out again in the morning.
I was sheltered at night and spent my time reading in parks and walking. I was fairly self-directed when it came to getting access to food stamps and insurance and I knew that was important for my survival.
In April 2022, I was staying at the [Santa Cruz] Vets Hall and walked over to the Housing Matters campus to see a nurse at HPHP. I was standing in line and had a syncopal event; I lost consciousness and hit the ground. I ended up having an abscess underneath my eye and was at Dominican Hospital for three days on antibiotics. They did a procedure and put a drain in, and it eventually healed.
Luckily I had healthcare during that time, so now I am working to just get things taken care of while I am staying in the Housing Matters Recuperative Care Center (RCC).
I got medical [insurance] earlier in 2022. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have qualified for the RCC, so I’m incredibly fortunate to have secured healthcare. If I didn’t have that insurance, who knows what would’ve happened.
Staying healthy isn’t easy while living on the streets. Figuring out how to get insurance was a top priority of mine. Keeping my feet dry and sleeping as much as I could were also priorities of mine to stay healthy. It’s really misunderstood how important sleep is: there is a difference between napping and eight straight hours of sleep. That is hard to achieve when you’re sleeping outside.
It’s also hard to stay away from junk food and soda. I had my camp stove and carried my water, but food goes bad quickly. Walking a lot kept me active and I was fairly lucky in my health compared to others.
I got into the RCC just by a throw of the dice. While I was at Dominican Hospital, Sandy, a social worker on my floor set me up with the HPHP and Housing Matters.
When I first moved in, there were already four people living there and we meshed really well. It turned into a cohesive group of five or six people, creating a restorative and almost family-oriented environment, very calm. We grocery-shopped together and had house dinners. We even left our doors open, it was a relief to feel so safe.
It was an amazing group of people, and overall it’s been very good. If you’ve never done communal living, it’s an adjustment, but I’m getting used to it. It feels good to find a little bit of stability on the other side.
I’m really appreciating what it is to be housed. It’s a lot cleaner than not being housed because you just can’t keep up with proper hygiene on the streets. You have to change your schedule and there are very few options to shower and keep up with hygiene when you don’t have housing.
Seeing the attitude toward me when I was living unhoused was really hard. There’s a sense of invisibility: you don’t want people to see you as homeless or to be recognized as homeless. And people, in turn, do not want to see the homeless. I try to wear clean clothes most of the time and do my best to appear “normal” and to fit in because of the way people look at me. It’s exhausting on top of everything else and quite dehumanizing. What’s accepted and what’s acceptable changes. But we are all human at the end of the day. We’re just trying to meet our basic needs and to survive.
I work at Homeless Garden Project (HGP) four days a week and the two programs [HGP and Housing Matters] meshed together amazingly. It’s working really well for me and it’s an amazing fit. When I first got here and lived with five people in the RCC, it was a chance at resocialization. Working at HGP requires socialization which is very important, because when you’re homeless you have a tendency to try to disappear and isolate. Whether you like it or not, you become isolated and alienated, whether it is by choice or just by how people treat you.
This story was collected in October 2022 by Andrea Feltz, Lived Experience Advisory Group Manager
Updated blurb written by Andrea Eaton, RCC Program Manager who worked directly with Robert
