Dear Gwendolyn:
I am 32 years old and I am finally taking life seriously. I didn’t take life seriously when I was 18. I left a good paying janitorial job to hang out on the streets and slept with females for 10 additional years. During that period of my life, I was blessed and saved from drug overdoses, suicide attempts, shoot-outs and various street attacks. You name it, I was involved in it.
This is my problem: I was incarcerated for 18 months. After my release I could not find work. Therefore, I became homeless, sleeping on the streets. After about six months on the street, I was able to get into a transitional program that assisted men and women in my situation.
Through the program, I was able to receive a Section 8 voucher. I went to look at an apartment that had been approved by Section 8, but when I saw a roach, I turned it down. Besides that, the kitchen cabinets were dirty. Now my voucher expires within six weeks. It allows me to seek housing in another town, but I don’t have money to go any other place.
Gwendolyn, many apartments have a rule about not accepting felons. Do you think I made a bad decision? I’m living on the streets again. Robert
Dear Robert:
Without even asking that question, you know you made a poor decision. Think about it. What you should have been noticing most was the location itself. It is better to live in an upscale neighborhood of average housing than to seek a new dwelling built in the midst of the dreads of society. Before your voucher expires, I suggest that you go back to the apartment where you saw the roach and inquire of its vacancy. Express to the landlord and to Section 8 your concerns.
Let me tell you this: I find it difficult to believe that you turned down a place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to relax and place you could have called ‘home’ – all because of a roach. Man, where were your thoughts? Roaches can be exterminated by merely buying a can of bug spray. You could have purchased some type of cleanser and cleaned the cabinets. I simply refuse to believe that you lived on the street and did not encounter danger beyond a roach. That little roach that you saw will cause you less harm than the roaches on the street – that walk upright.
***Have a problem? Write to Gwendolyn Baianes at: P. O. Box 10066, Raleigh, NC 27605-0066 (to receive a reply, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope). or email her at: gwenbaines@hotmail.com. or visit her website at: www.gwenbaines.com