my home

I have lived in this apartment longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere.

This means quite a bit to me.

With my parents I moved three times, all in southern California.

From when they died in 1977, I have moved over 40 times, all over the US.

In ’96 when I returned to the states from Japan I was shocked to see how expensive rent had become here.  I moved in with a college buddy who was living in his friend’s house.  There were four of us living there.  My friend turned out to be a crack-head.  The other house mate was a tweaker (meth and speed), and I never did firgure out what the house’s owner was into – but he was strange too.

My friends A & J were living in a nice two bedroom house through Housing Authority of Portland.  I was jealous, they had such a nice, new place.  There was no way I would qualify for Housing- don’t have any kids, and I’m a white male.  You know, part of the “priveliged class”.  That didn’t mean shit for me, but some of these politically correct assholes think that being white is less desirable than being black, brown, yellow or red, and that if you’re white, you’ve automatically got it made and don’t need any help.

I fled the place I was living when the tweaker threatened me and I responded by picking up my rifle and offering to shoot his dumb ass.  Tweaker boy flipped out and called the cops.  They talked to us both separately and saw that I was the sane one – but they took my rifle and my .38 Smith and Wesson.  The courts would not give me a restaining order against tweaker boy because the house’s owner was ok with the tweaker being there, so I fled.  Packed up my wagon and got the hell out of Dodge.  And called Child Protective Services because I knew tweaker boy was molesting his five year old daughter.  (I told one of the cops about it that night and he said- direct quote- “I’d of shot his fucking ass myself if I knew that”)

I found a room in an old house, shared bathroom etc, which I could afford.  I was working for minimum wage with The Scottish Rite, a Masonic organisation.  The pay was not much, but as I found out later, the health benefits were a “cadillac” plan that saved my life when I wrecked the car in April ’98.  I might possibly have been fucked up for the rest of my life, institutionalised because of the brain injury. 

Very possibly!  I am the befitee of an experimental treatment that put my brain  back together.  It was split into three peices by the force of the wreck.  Had this been even 1996 it is doubtful that I would have recovered- at all, let alone being able to function and to live normally.  And to go on and earn my college degree!

I was badly damaged in the wreck and spent 59 days in 3 hospitals and then was transferred to an Adult Foster Home.  While there, my case worker applied to HAP for me for a place to live after the Foster Home.  I now was well qualified to go into Housing.  I was oficially “Disabled”

I was in foster care for six months before Housing came through for me.  They had one apartment for me.  I could look at it – take it even, but if I didn’t like it it was back to the end of the waiting list.  Since my insurance had run out and the State felt I was “good enough” to get out of foster care, it was made clear to me that I had better like the apartment or I would be getting my own shopping cart and be out on the streets.

I first saw this apartment 7 years ago.  It’s on the 8th floor of an 8 story building and has a south facing balcony.  I saw the balcony and said “I’ll take it.  Oh, what’s the rest of it look like?”

I am finishing my sixth year here and will be beginning my seventh year at the end of this month.  I have no plans to move- couldn’t afford too anyway, and I like it here.  As long as I pay the rent (which I did not have to do for almost five years!) and more or less obey the rules, I will never be thrown out.

This is not what  I imagined Housing would be.  There are no gangs here, no graffetti, and little or no crime.  It’s in a nice section of Portland and I feel no fear here, unlike other Housing units in the city.

I have it good here and want it to stay that way.  And it will.

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