On the Streets of Austin

Last Thursday, November 10, 2011 I boarded a bus, leaving Ft. Myers, FL, heading to Austin, TX. After about 37 hours on the bus I arrived on a chilly Saturday morning. When I left I left everything, including a very dear pet dog, Harley. I carried one bag with some clothes and my backpack with my laptop, a portfolio pad holder, my identification papers, and a little money.

I had no idea what the situation would be when I got here, but planned on living on the streets and sleeping in shelters till I could get settled in. On the Greyhound buses I was able to connect to the internet, most of them had working WiFi and 110v power outlets. I made contact with a young couple I knew in Austin, and in response they offered to pick me up and let me stay with them for a few days.

On that chilly Saturday morning, I met Matt M. for the first time. I recognized him from Grace's facebook profile pictures. It has been a great pleasure to get to know Matt over the last few days.

The weekend was resting from the bus trip, talking with Matt and making some kind of plans as to what to do and where to go on Monday.

At 6:30 AM Monday morning Matt dropped me off at ARCH/Front Steps in downtown Austin. ARCH is the government operated homeless shelter. I figured that I might need the shelter for a time and that they would have connections to all the other services available to assist the homeless and transients who need to get settled in.

I had to wait for other things to get going for those already in the system before they would have time to talk to me and start my induction into the homeless system. When my turn came, I and a counselor went to an office room and he started filling in my information. At one point in the interview we started to talk about employment and I mentioned that they had a ad in Craig's List for a Maintenance Tech that I thought I would be well suited to fill. At that point he collected up all of the paperwork and said to me that then we needed to do things differently. The rule is that if you are in the homeless system you must wait 6 months before you can apply for a job with them. He recommended that I make my application that day, and if I am not hired to then come back and get signed into the system to get some assistance.

So I emailed my resume to the manager and HR rep for ARCH. This kind of put a stop in all the other plans I had for that day as most of the rest of the services are all tied together to prevent abuses of the system.

more later....