Lived Experience, Improved Results

Amalia grew up in a military family, which means her parents and siblings never stayed in one place too long. As an adult, Amalia has remained on the go, staying busy and working hard as a business owner, as well as picking herself up whenever life knocked her down.

“I’m a faith-in-action person,” she said. “I don’t lay down easy and I don’t give up.”

Her resilient spirit has come in handy as a member of our Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB). We formed LEAB to receive feedback from those who have experienced homelessness, to improve the quality of Abode’s work.

“I want to be an advocate for the vulnerable and defenseless in the area of being unhoused,” Amalia said.

She can relate to those in need, as she has battled family dysfunction, physical and mental health issues, an unreliable spouse, and financial woes – the combination of which led her to experience homelessness.

Those experiences also taught her that too many people believe a “false narrative” about people who live without a home.

“People assume unhoused people are on drugs or have mental health issues,” she said. “I’ve made good money, I was middle class, but life just happened to me and I lost everything.”  

No matter what issues Amalia had to deal with – including crises that ranged from familial to financial to physical and mental – she leaned on her deeply resilient spirit and strong work ethic to battle back. When she lived in a shelter, she visualized her goals for work, income, independence, and gaining a new home – and then began working toward those targets.

Eventually, she qualified for Abode’s Rapid Rehousing program. More than a year later, Amalia has stability and said she is ready to help others. She said she has seen more and more middle class Bay Area residents are losing their homes because of rapid income inequality.

“I’ve seen people with good jobs having to go to food banks to eat,” she said.

Amalia looks forward to using her life experience to carry out her LEAB member duties, giving voice to the voiceless.

“I’d like to give people a voice, especially those who are overwhelmed and couldn’t express their needs,” she said. “Some people just don’t have support and they can’t advocate for themselves. I’d love to be their voice while working on LEAB.”

Homelessness can happen to anybody. Christopher’s story is proof of that.

The trained wine educator and former restaurant leader has years of job experience and a strong work ethic. But a workplace injury and slow-moving bureaucracy, coupled with bad timing related to his housing situation, left Christopher without a home for almost a year.

Enduring that type of personal journey, in which simple misfortune leads to major calamity, has given Christopher a clear-eyed perspective on what many people go through when they live without a home. It’s also why he is one of many valued members of the Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB), which has been formed to improve Abode’s efforts to end homelessness.

Christopher was living in Napa County and making a good living when he suffered a workplace injury. But then a series of events unfolded that were out of his control. As his injury ended his income, his roommate moved in with his girlfriend and Christopher had to find a new home. As he struggled to keep stable housing, a money settlement tied to his work injury was stalled and did not arrive on time.

Unable to work and with no income, he soon depleted his savings. The bad luck left Christopher without a home for 11 months. He lived in his truck with his service dog, a Red Nose Pit Bull named Leonidas Alexander.

Experiencing homeless for nearly a year has changed his perspective.

“It’s very surreal and it shifts your mindset on what life is really about,” he said. “Everything that you thought you knew goes out the window and you’re able to see the bigger picture in life.”

He spent a brief time in a shelter before eventually gained housing in the Napa area. He said he intends to move into another North Bay home when his housing voucher is ready.

Christopher is an energetic doer and he simply likes to help. Even before joining LEAB, he started a regular meal program, feeding as many as 50 individuals experiencing homessness in the Napa County area.

As his housing situation has stabilized, he has been able to think about next steps for his career, including plans to start his own catering company. He said he would like to use his time as a LEAB member to provide more solutions to people who do not have a home.

“I’d like to simplify the problem-solving process to help formerly homeless people,” he said. “When it comes to finding solutions, impatience can be a good thing.”

Christopher paused and smiled.

“Sorry, that’s the restaurant person in me talking,” he said.

Gerald has always been a mentally engaged person who is willing to learn new skills.

He also has long been physically active, whether as a wrestler and multi-sport athlete in high school or as a hard-working employee as an adult.

But the physically strenuous work that gave him so much purpose took a big toll on his body. Decades spent as a truck driver and a carpet cleaner led his body to deteriorate, causing chronic injuries to his back, hip, and shoulder. That left him unemployable and it ruined his income.

“I couldn’t work and I lost everything,” Gerald said.

He lost his apartment and often stayed with friends. Sometimes simple bad luck dashed his best efforts. When he found a room to rent with a friend who was leasing a house, the property owner lost everything from the housing collapse and, just as quickly, Harlan no longer had a place to live.

He started sleeping on public transit and coffee shops, spending most of that time in San Bruno and other parts of San Mateo County.

“The uncertainty is one of the worst parts of experiencing homelessness,” he said. “Not knowing exactly when you’ll shower again and not knowing if you’ll ever have your own home again.”

In spite of these steep and daunting challenges, Gerald kept looking for solutions.

He bought a laptop computer and, as a regular customer at a Peninsula-area coffeehouse, he learned new skills. He was crafting a comeback plan for what would become the second act of his professional career.

Gerald learned how to do web design and began creating websites, culling together income from social security and his newfound tech skills.

“The Starbucks manager liked me and let me work there,” he said. “Plus, I met clients there – people who eventually hired me to design their websites.”

Gerald was on the rise, but he was still vulnerable to unexpected crises. When Covid-19 struck in early 2020, his only shelter was a car that his friend lent him to sleep in. He was sitting in that vehicle when an Abode outreach team member parked next to him and asked if he needed help.

Soon thereafter, Abode placed Gerald in a shelter and he later moved into permanent supportive housing.

He has continued to earn income from creating websites and on side jobs such as food delivery and rideshare driving.

Gerald’s strong work ethic is one of many reasons why he is a good fit as a new member of the Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB), which has been formed to help Abode improve efforts to fulfill its mission of ending homelessness.

He also brings invaluable knowledge garnered by years of experience, as well as a genuine yearning to help others who are experiencing homelessness.

“The system can be hard to navigate for those trying to find their own home, or to see if you qualify or not for certain programs,” he said. “The answers are there, but you often can’t get to them.”

Gerald aims to use his fascination with computer arts to further hone his tech skills and keep growing his Internet-related business. By designing his own comeback story, he can give advice as a LEAB member to show the way for others like him.

“All my life I’ve been out there doing it,” he said. “But I’d rather be out there helping people.”

Izel’s childhood was marked by his family’s rootlessness, as his loved ones moved frequently between upstate New York and several parts of Northern and Southern California.

His childhood chaos prevented Izel from finding stability and fueled rebellious behavior that hindered his education at key points in his adolescence. It also led him to live occasionally without a home when he was still just a teenager.

But through it all, Izel has used self-reliance and resourcefulness to overcome adversity and gain housing, while trying to forge a career.  

After dropping out of high school, he left his family home and stayed with friends, often moving from Sacramento and the East Bay – and back again. But he later returned to earn his degree from a continuation high school. He also began focusing on his interest in electronics, building his skills in the field to earn a paycheck.

“I was proficient in it and I started working and making a living for myself in electronics,” he said.

Izel never shied away from work, as he often held two or three jobs at once to earn a living. But expensive Bay Area rents made it nearly impossible for him to afford his own home and, as a result, he experienced homelessness. He had sleep on the street on some nights, Izel said.

“It’s scary experience, but I was raised to be resourceful and be able to adapt,” he said. “I knew how to take responsibility do whatever I had to do, and I knew how to ask for help. That’s what got me through being homeless.”

Izel never gave up, however, and kept trying to improve his living situation. He stayed in shelter and joined housing programs and, eventually, he gained a home at an Abode permanent supportive housing site.

He also continued pursuing his dreams. His passion is music and writing lyrics, as the creative outlet is cathartic for him. He studied to be a music producer and audio engineer and graduated shortly before the pandemic started.

“Music is like a healing process for me, it brings me peace of mind,” he said.

Izel has also sought to learn other professional skills, with the goal of widening his job options.

He’s begun taking classes to forge a career as a social worker, taking classes that will teach him how to help other people who are experiencing homelessness.  

He’s doing similar work as a member of Abode’s Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB), which asks members to use their lived experience to inform Abode how it can better assist others who are currently unhoused.

“I like serving as a LEAB member,” he said. “It’s opening my eyes as to what should be going on. It’s been an inclusive experience for me.”

It’s important for young people to have a mentor or role model to help when advice is needed and to teach them the difference between right and wrong, he said.

It is a role Izel is happy to serve.

“It is so hard to be young, homeless, have no support, and you’re forced to try harder and harder because the odds are against you,” he said. “Someone has to help and show them the way. Someone has to have heart.”

Kavya excels at fixing things.

The Milpitas resident especially enjoys repairing computers and other tech systems. So, it’s only fitting that Kavya has centered those skills on contributing to Abode’s Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB), using that passion for fixing systems to bolster our agency in the process.

We formed LEAB to receive feedback from those who have experienced homelessness, to improve the quality of Abode’s work. Kavya is one of LEAB’s newest members.

While transitioning from one gender to another, Kavya experienced homelessness suddenly and unexpectedly in 2022, after being told to leave home. Living unhoused was a scary experience, especially when hearing unfamiliar noises in the middle of the night while sleeping in a car. Other times, police would knock on the car windshield and order Kavya to leave.

Kavya lived without a home for almost a year, bouncing around different parking lots. Attempts to find housing through countless agencies, nonprofits, and government websites yielded nothing. However, that luck changed one day as Kavya placed belongings into a storage unit, where an employee recommended Abode. That recommendation was life-changing.

“I knocked on the door in Abode’s San Jose location and they helped me,” Kavya said.

In less than a year, Kavya moved into interim housing and then permanent supportive housing in Milpitas.

“I was surprised that the system would work that fast and that effectively,” Kavya said.

Abode also connected Kavya to Work2Future – a jobs program that connects employers to participants who have the chance to gain work experience and build their resume. Kavya works now as an IT technician that repairs laptops. Kavya joined LEAB with similar goals, helping to improve Abode programs and the nonprofit ecosystem in general.

“I want to help in whatever capacity I can,” Kavya said. “A LEAB meeting feels normal to me. I do there what I always do – offer solutions and talk about how things could be better.”

Kavya believes that negative misconceptions about homeless individuals and people with low incomes are all too common.

“Poor people shouldn’t be dehumanized,” Kavya said. “They’re wrongly seen as people who made bad decisions when, in fact, people are homeless from a system designed not to help people – a system that seems rigged from the start.”

That there are people who work full-time at minimum wage but cannot afford a home is an example of a broken system, Kavya said.

Kavya also deploys strong organizational skills to assist other LGBTQ+ friends, sending them spreadsheets and Google documents to help them navigate the system.

“I’m a trans person and I want to tell other people like me, ‘Hey, you don’t need to accept this, you have other options,” Kavya said. “My personal experiences – as a student, as a homeless person, as a trans person – can inform people and they can use that knowledge to make good decisions. It’s a conversation that needs to be had.”

Kevin and his sister were dealt life’s most difficult hand – both of their parents passed away when they were young children.

By age 10, Kevin and his sister were orphans. Their grandmother raised them, but the large void from the loss of their mother and father could never be completely filled again.

“It was definitely a challenge, we had to get used to it,” Kevin said. “There’s a lot that I felt I missed. I kept a sad place in my heart about it all.”

That sense of loss in childhood put Kevin on a path toward economic instability in adulthood, followed by housing insecurity.

Still, he persevered. He was gainfully employed and sharing a home with his girlfriend. But when they broke up, he suddenly did not have a home. He stayed with his sister as he continued to work and look for new apartments. But not having a place of his own for two years led him to suffer health issues, and his mental health spiraled.  

“I lost everything and I was going through a lot,” he said. “Staying positive was the hardest challenge and I fell into depression.”

Kevin said his fortune changed for the better when he got connected to Abode, whose staff members helped him gained housing of his own in the East Bay. Having a home of his own has made all the difference.

“I needed this time alone to get myself together,” he said. “I didn’t get back to being myself until I was living here.”

He has since joined Abode’s Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB) to help others who are struggling as once did. The LEAB board aims to utilize members’ lived experience of homelessness to improve Abode’s efforts to help those who are currently unhoused.

Kevin said, as a LEAB member, he has similar goals.

“I just want to make sure the program is beneficial to the people who need it,” he said. “We want the plans in our curriculum to everyone’s needs.”  

And Kevin knows what those needs might involve.

“Just getting a roof over your head doesn’t solve everything, but it helps you feel like you have a chance to solve everything,” he said.

Kevin praises the Housing First approach that Abode favors, which finds that once one has a roof over their head, the services that follow are much more effective at helping them gain and keep their housing.

“Having your own home, no matter what, makes a big difference,” he said. “A roof over your head gives you a foundation. Even when I didn’t have much here at my place, I still felt better because at least it was mine.”

Now that he has his own home, he aims to maintain the progress that he has made in his life. He wants to gain full-time work, keep his housing, and continue to pay all his bills.

As he pursues those goals, his spirit is bolstered by the fact that he and his sister can continue to show each other support. And he can now return the favor and host her for dinner at his apartment

As someone who has experienced homelessness before, Kevin said he also is eager to use his life lessons to benefit others.

“I was feeling lost at one time in my life and I don’t want anyone to feel like that,” he said.

When Marcus grew up in Mississippi, his mother taught him that problems could be solved with creativity and hard work.

“She’d say, ‘When a plan isn’t working, you need to erase the drawing board and come up with something better’,” Marcus said.

Today, Marcus is using that simple, homespun advice as a member of Abode’s Lived Experience Advisory Board.

We formed LEAB to receive feedback from those who have experienced homelessness, to improve the quality of Abode’s work.

Marcus said he enjoys crafting ideas that help people move from homelessness into a home.

“I like contributing to LEAB’s mission,” he said. “I’m realizing that it’s a calling.”

Marcus experienced homelessness after he moved to California to improve his job prospects, but that plan did not yield results. He also realized that it was not easy for him to ask for help, but it was something he had to do. He also leaned on another life lesson from his upbringing: To never give up.

“My Mom taught me you have to get back up in life, even if you’ve fallen far,” he said.

Marcus enjoyed working, saying he “likes getting my hands dirty.” He worked at various jobs over the years, including carpentry, construction, and auto manufacturing. As he kept working, he persistently looked for a home. Eventually, he was connected to an Abode interim housing site before finding an apartment at an Abode supportive housing community in San Jose.  

He said the stability of a home has greatly improved his life, allowing him to take classes and focus on his mental health. He is especially enthused that friends have joined him at his classes, where they can grow together.

“I like creative thinking because it’s like space – it’s limitless,” he said. “If you limit your thinking, you limit your life.”

As a LEAB member, Marcus aims to assist formerly homeless individuals because he understands their struggles.

“A lot of us have childhood trauma and that affects our adult lives,” he said. “To heal those wounds, you have to look within; people are lost because they’re looking for answers outside of themselves, instead of healing from within and starting from the inside.”  

He added: “At LEAB, I’m looking forward to my opinion being heard and, hopefully, that opinion inspires someone else. I want to help as many people as I can.”  

When her father left home and never returned, Maria was forced to help raise her siblings while her mother worked long hours. The experience leadened her teenage years with trauma and depression. To escape that unusually stressful adolescence, as well as fit in with her classmates, Maria began using drugs and alcohol.

She developed issues with addiction and, despite loving books and being an “A” student, she did not graduate high school with her class. This partly led her down a spiraling path that resulted in Maria experiencing homelessness more than once.  She always worked, but bad breaks and health ailments – including a harrowing bout with cancer – consistently derailed her plans.

Today, however, Maria is back in a safe, secure home, which is aiding her recovery, improving her health, and giving her a pathway toward stability.

She has earned her GED degree and eventually gained permanent housing. She also is putting her life lessons to good use by serving on Abode’s Lived Experience Advisory Board.

We formed LEAB to receive feedback from those who have experienced homelessness, to improve the quality of Abode’s work.

“I want to advocate and help other people in whatever way I can,” Maria said. “I want to gain further opportunities to do something worthwhile with my life.”

Maria lives in an Abode supportive housing site in the East Bay, and having her own home is allowing her to focus on transforming her life.

“It’s made a big difference for me,” she said. “I wanted to get housing, which I got, and to stabilize my health – which is getting better. I’m meeting my goals.”

The stability of a home gives Maria the time and sense of calm to focus on what matters to her.  

“It’s a place where I can just be,” she said. “This was my first birthday where I’m enjoying my life, with no health issues getting in my way.”

Now, Maria intends to use her platform on the LEAB board to give back to the community, using her ample life experience to provide insight and advice to those in need.

“I want to volunteer, I want to help nonprofits like Abode that help homeless people,” she said. “I have a life now, I have health, and I need to give back somehow because I’m still alive for a reason.”

The stories of people who have experienced homelessness are filled with courageous people who faced countless challenges with dignity and grace, persevering until they found a home of their own.

Melody can relate.

It’s one of many reasons why she has joined our Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB), which was formed so that Abode can improve the quality of our work after receiving feedback from those who have experienced homelessness.

Melody’s personal journey is marked by trauma from child abuse and battles with mental health. These challenges led her to experience homelessness until she gained housing in Alameda County in 2021.

Having a secure apartment has made all the difference in allowing Melody to transform her life, she said.  

“I have a roof over my head, I have enough food, I’m paying off debts, and I’m no worried about being homeless anymore,” Melody said. “It’s made a big difference.”

She loves her East Bay neighborhood, including her church where she has made good friends. Socializing with friendly people and seeing familiar faces has added to her growing sense of stability.

Melody said she now has the time and resources to focus on her next career steps. One of her goals is to serve her community by speaking in support of improved mental health care and access to affordable housing, as well as advocating for people who live without a home.  

“I’m just one person but I’d like to see improvemements for people who grapple with mental health and homelessness,” she said.

As a LEAB member, Melody said she is learning a lot from her colleagues. However, she also is excited to use her life experience to give her input to help people who facing problems from being unhoused.

Melody said there are many misconceptions about people who are experiencing homelessness. The reality is a lot more complicated than some people think, she said.

“A lot of people just need a little help,” she said.

People want to be housed but they might be dealing with a disability or perhaps they’re unaware about a job program or housing qualification that could connect them to an affordable home. Her advice to people experiencing homelessness is to persevere, no matter how much adversity one faces.

“Call shelters, call programs, call nonprofits. Be persistent and call everyday,” she said. “Don’t ever give up.”