ABOUT ME

Father Harry Dailey, this will be the only time I will address him as such, would run around the shelter, harassing the homeless and proclaim “Down here I am GOD, I decide if you can stay or have to leave. This is my shelter”. I was afraid for my life when Harry was around, I had seen that crazed look in his eyes before.

My father was an alcoholic, just like Harry. For as far as I can remember back my father beat my mother and when I was thirteen he stabbed her to death in a drunken rage. Harry would pull a knife out of his pocket, trying to lock playful, cleaning his fingernails with the knife, his head lowered a bit, while he looked at me over the brim of his glasses “you know I can make all that you have go away, everything you worked for. One word from me to Bubba and she will throw you out, don’t you ever forget that”.

Harry always had knifes and swords in his office and there were a few occasions during my employment at the shelter I had to visit him there. Not being able to breathe because someone had poured concrete into your lungs, your knees are about to diminish, your ears are filled with blasts from a howitzer tank at the frontline during battle, every pore in your skin discharges sweat oozing with fear, your mouth so dried out you can’t scream, and the only image in your mind is Harry, you and the knife in the same room.

When I became homeless in August of 2005 I was utterly ashamed, embarrassed and depressed. Like so many I had attached stigma and judgment to homeless people, and now I was one myself. Becoming homeless is a horrible experience, one loses self-respect, self-esteem, confidence, the will to progress, becomes pessimistic, negative, sarcastic, and develops a gloomy outlook on tomorrow. Trust is lost, the trust in one's own ability to provide, to make sound judgments, the trust that family and friends will not change the way they look at you. With 100% certainty I can say that not all homeless people that are now emotional dysfunctional were that way before becoming homeless.

The experience of becoming, being, and living homeless never goes away. Not being able to have confidence that, literally, tomorrow will be just another good day, the awareness of something sinister hovering over you is ever present. The way people are treated at Austin Street Center only intensifies the negative and self-destructive thoughts one already has developed. The fact that I still include myself when talking about homeless people, I always refer to “us”, is an indication that emotionally I feel closer to people that are still homeless than those that are housed.

Harry demanded to be worshiped, there was no alternative, one was not permitted to have an opinion other than his. The ramifications for not obeying his every demand were always devastating for the people at Austin Street Center. Harry would throw a woman out on the street if he didn’t like how she looked at him, or a man because he didn’t say good morning in the right tone, and the next day he would throw someone out just for saying good morning. He was erratic and we never knew what come through the door when he walked in.

Throwing a person out on the street is not only detrimental to that person, but it is traumatic for all that are witness to the incident as well, hard core psychological abuse. “A little sidewalk therapy will do him/her good,” was Bubba’s, Harry’s and Carisa’s philosophy.