The truth of the human condition

Written by Tony Del Zompo, Lived Experience Advisory Group Member, Housing Matters

The truth of the human condition is, to me at least, far more compelling than any fiction or fantasy story. If you were to meet me today, you probably wouldn’t suspect that I had ever struggled with addiction or a mental health crisis. You might not believe that I had lived in my car, slept in a bush, or that I had been committed to a psych ward on more than one occasion. I once resided in transitional housing at the Page Smith Community House on Coral Street, and I wasn’t exactly what you’d call “well” when I left the shelter campus. It took several false starts before I got clean and began what I consider to be a life-long process of recovery. Much of the last several years seems like a series of happy accidents which led to opportunities that I hadn’t imagined. I never would have believed that I’d become a member of the Lived Experience Advisory Group for Housing Matters nearly twenty years after I had moved off of the property; the closest I was willing to get to the shelter was when I drove past on my way home from Costco. 

I went to the Farmer’s Market at Cabrillo College last summer to inquire about tabling my book when I met a woman who invited me to attend a Neighbors for Neighbors event at a local library. My curiosity got the better of me, and it was there that I met Mer Stafford, Chief Impact Officer of Housing Matters. I told her about the memoir I had written and my idea for a mental health advocacy brand. When I expressed my desire to put my story to use, Mer invited me to tour the new campus. She and I met the following week, and as I stood on the same spot where I had spent two of the most difficult years of my life, I was overwhelmed by emotions I had long since forgotten. When Mer asked me to join LEAG, I knew that there was a reason she and I had met in the first place. 

It isn’t easy to return to Coral Street and witness once again the despair that afflicts the unhoused members of our community. I’d sometimes rather forget how bad it had gotten for me now that my life is working, but then I remember the admonition about what happens to those of us who ignore the lessons of our collective as well as our personal histories. For me, the lived experience is useless without the shared experience; if my prior struggle is to mean anything at all, it is only through service to another individual who may feel as hopeless as I once did. Perhaps I might be an inspiration to someone in need of a reason to imagine a better life for themselves; maybe I can even change a mind or two within a society that would rather ignore a problem and instead attempt to wish it away…