“To Remember”

Remarks from David, a former HTC guest who spoke at the memorial service held on December 7 at St. Joseph’s church for the homeless who have died on the streets of New Orleans in 2016. The service was sponsored by the HTC and others, and we are proud of David for his part. This is the written copy of his speech.

“Good evening. I appreciate being asked to speak to all of you tonight about what it’s like to be living homeless on the streets of New Orleans.

I’m born and raised in New Orleans but unfortunate family circumstances after the death of my parents put me on the streets.

In my life it seems I have found and stepped into many potholes – although not always intentionally!

The time when I was homeless spanned over 12 months and was a
very difficult time for me.  Even though I have held various jobs over the years, having epilepsy makes it especially difficult to maintain a job since there is no warning when a seizure might occur.

As you can imagine, this made it doubly hard to live outside.  I was very cautious where I would lay my head and wondered if the concrete might trigger another seizure.

You have to face a lot of obstacles when living on the street.

Things were always getting stolen and I would have to figure out how to replace those items such as my ID cards, all my medical cards, medicine and other important papers.

Living on the streets was actually life-threatening.  There were many nights when I slept with only one eye open because of what might happen when I was sleeping.   I was always very conscious of my safety.

The streets are unforgiving and the climate is not something you can always predict, so when it rained, I often had to leave my spot to find a dry space to sleep.

Sometimes, the insensitivity of others discouraged me and was embarrassing.  Like the times when people wouldn’t look at me as they walked past me and would give me the cold shoulder, or worse, would intentionally splash water on me as they drove or walked past me.

I am very grateful to those who took the time and effort to help me move off the streets into my own apartment which I have been in now for a little over 2 months.

I’ve learned a lot over the past year through this experience.  My faith has been strengthened.   The experience doesn’t hurt anymore, so it has helped me to have faith that God is watching out for me.  The hardest part was letting go and letting God be in control– trying to be in control while on streets was really difficult.

It hurts me that some of the people that I was with out there actually died last year and didn’t survive.  Some of them were the ones who encouraged me not to give up.   I am grateful that they are being remembered by all of you tonight —  by people who didn’t even know them .

Even though I am blessed to have come OFF the street, I have a lot of empathy for those still suffering out there and would like to do anything possible to help them find housing and shelter. I am involved with the Tiny House project which aims to build more small houses for the homeless.

I have been delivered from all those potholes I fell into and I’d like to help others avoid them too!

Thank you for coming tonight to do something that is very important – TO REMEMBER those we have lost.”