Homeless Not Helpless

In September 2009, my home for the past year was a no-tell hotel, so crime-ridden police were holding their nightly roll call in the hotel’s parking lot. Police were called to this hotel over one hundred times just that summer. I came home my last day there to find a SWAT team arresting my neighbor for (armed) robbery in the drug store across the street. I moved out then and there, fearing for my safety. The only option available to me at the time was to put myself out on the street. Homele...