In January 2011, after struggling with unstable housing for three years, I received good news: an offer from a childhood friend to move into a room in his apartment in Manhattan. Michael knew about the sharp downward turn my life had taken since my honorable discharge from the Navy in 2008. I was a skilled military IT specialist up against a recession and hiring managers who seemed wary of veterans. Unable to find a job, I experienced the all-too-common domino effect: an eviction, a repossessed car, and years of unstable housing. I had turned to plasma donations and odd jobs to barely scrape by.
Michael’s invitation offered me hope in a desperate time, and I eagerly moved in. I imagined rebuilding my life alongside Michael as we wrote a new chapter in our friendship. But soon after my arrival, he showed me the door. His girlfriend wanted me out. I’d known Michael since high school, but now our entire friendship felt like a lie.
That night, I spent my last $200 on a cheap hotel near Times Square. The next morning, I joined the ranks of the unhoused trudging through the city in a blizzard. I didn’t have much. The cold sliced through my jeans and paper-thin windbreaker. I wrapped my sneakers in plastic bags to keep them from getting soaked. I darted around corners to hide from police officers; it was the era of stop-and-frisk, and harassing homeless veterans was something of a game to them. Meanwhile, I had become invisible to everyone else—no one dared look me in the eye. I had never felt more alone.
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I needed safe housing, but I also needed a friend. Social support plays a vital role in helping unhoused people rebuild their lives. Research shows that homeless substance users tend to experience varying forms of social exclusion, but “positive social networks” can lead them to seek treatment, experience greater success, and avoid relapse. For our country’s 37,000 unhoused veterans, many of whom suffer from PTSD, navigating life without community support can be harrowing. Between 2015 and 2020, deaths of homeless people rose by 77% in 20 urban areas. After being walked over and forgotten, those people died alone. It’s a shame that our society looks at this vulnerable population and sees a problem to be solved rather than a person—someone’s parent, sibling, or child. But homeless people’s suffering won’t change without a total reframing of the issue: In addition to “wraparound” support—comprehensive care that addresses the many issues an individual might be dealing with—unhoused people need friends and communities that see them as human beings worthy of belonging.
It took me a long time to find a true friend. But when I did, it changed my life.
After Michael kicked me out, I spent a few months bouncing between the streets and homeless shelters. Eventually, I moved into an SRO (single room occupancy), transitional housing that provides the services of a shelter with more autonomy for residents: a single room with a communal toilet and cooking area. It sounds decent on paper, but the day-to-day reality of living in an SRO is horrifying. I’ve written about the regular explosions of violence, substance use, and chaos I witnessed and how, as a veteran struggling with alcohol dependency and PTSD, this pushed me to the brink. But I fought for a better life, and eventually convinced the VA to help me access the resources I was due. Thanks to the post-9/11 G.I. Bill, I started going to college at The New School. That’s where I met Jared. (His name has been changed to protect his privacy.)
The day Jared approached me in the lunchroom, I immediately knew he was prior military. His crew cut, standard-issue glasses (we call them “birth-control glasses” because they’re so ugly), camo pants, and desert-brown boots were a dead giveaway. This was exactly the type of dude I couldn’t stand: an ex-soldier stuck in the past.
But he greeted me with kindness. Jared was immediately disarming—a white Nebraskan boy with soft eyes, thinning dirty-blond hair, and an endearing kind of awkwardness. Likely on the autism spectrum, he struggled to read social cues and, no matter my mood, always bounded up to me like a big, happy lab. It was refreshing. We had been meeting in the lunchroom and around campus for two or three weeks when Jared suggested we become roommates. I perked up. This guy could be my ticket out of the SRO.
Within the month of meeting Jared, I was able to settle into a two-bedroom duplex with him in Brooklyn. Initially, it felt like a business deal—two strangers signing a contract, looking to save money on rent. But over time, we became true friends. We were both nerds who loved videogames, and he introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. We stayed up late swapping military stories and jokes, and I’d think to myself: Finally, here’s someone who got it.
Jared always supported me, even as he struggled to understand the emotions of others. He didn’t cry, not even at the funeral of a close mutual friend. Once, when I came home crying about a girl who had just broken my heart, Jared sat next to me. “I understand that people have a need to be close,” he said. “I don’t really get it, but I don’t mind talking it over with you.” At the time, I craved companionship so much that it hurt. It helped having Jared by my side.
One of the best things about our friendship was the community Jared attracted. When I lived on the streets, I feared everyone around me. But Jared turned our apartment into the party house, and I learned to open myself up to others. Friends flowed in and out for D&D gatherings, game nights, and parties. Ours was the house full of laughter and music that drew people in, thanks to Jared.
I didn’t always handle myself well in social situations. Often, I’d find myself drunk, belligerent, and dating a woman who soon got tired of my antics. I would self-sabotage to get her to break up with me. Tapping into my feelings and sharing them with people who want to be close to me has been my life’s greatest challenge. Jared seemed frustrated and embarrassed by some of this behavior. After a particularly boozy night, he finally confronted me about my drinking.
“Are you OK, man?” he asked. “I mean, you drink a lot. It just seems like you’re trying not to cope with something.”
How could he possibly know such a thing? I was astonished that someone was paying enough attention to notice. Most people I had met after the military didn’t care enough about me to point out how my actions affected me or others. I had always tried to be a nice guy who people could depend on—but I was scarred from the hard times I had been through, when people mistook my kindness for weakness. What happened to me? Until now, it was as if I had disappeared, but no one bothered to report me missing. But Jared’s kindness found me. I was struck by how a friendship could be so real, how much he wanted to see me get better.
“Until now, it was as if I had disappeared, but no one bothered to report me missing. But Jared’s kindness found me.”
I did get better, eventually, but only after a suicide attempt and an unforgiving trip to the psych ward. Jared was right there when I got out. “So, did you meet any new people?” he joked, knowing how to put a smile on my face.
Through it all, I tried to return his kindness, offering to introduce him to women, teach him to cook, or just talk about his future. He’d often politely decline, but at times, he’d ask me to decode social dynamics. I could see the hurt or confusion in his eyes as he struggled to understand other people.
Once, he asked me, “How do you know if people like you, or just like the things you can do or give them?”
I straightened up, feeling highly qualified to answer this question. “Sometimes, you just don’t know,” I said. “I think it’s more about what they want from you and what happens if they don’t get it. See how people treat you when you don’t give them what they want.”
He thought on that for a second. It was a simple exchange, but I could tell it meant something to him.
I haven’t had many close male friendships in my life. When I was growing up, many of the men around me had created a narrative that it was not OK to talk about our feelings or our mental health. There was always a “crazy uncle” nobody wanted to talk about except as the butt of a joke. The hypermasculinity of people in my peer group and older made it seem OK for men to be disrespectful womanizers, but not to be sensitive and caring—and definitely not gay. Since Jared had been such a great example of a male friend, it meant that I had to start redefining what it meant to be a male friend. I could be there for him because it finally felt safe to do so.
As much as Jared struggled to read people, he had no problems making friends. He befriended the many Jamaican neighbors on our block, and soon we found ourselves at their parties. They were the kind of people we could turn to in an emergency—reliable folks who cared about others. Our upstairs neighbors regularly brought us their traditional home cooking—savory fried snapper, seasoned corn on the cob, steaming bowls of greens—and shared beautiful stories about their family, homeland, and culture. I wished I had that kind of connection to my history. As a Black American, I’ve often felt excluded by certain members of the Black community. A Nigerian cab driver once told me I wasn’t a real Black man, and some disagreeable Jamaicans had called me racist names, but here on this quaint brownstone-lined Bushwick street, I finally felt a sense of belonging. For many, these might be ordinary social interactions, but for me, they were extremely special.
It was so special to me because the racism of dominant American culture has made it difficult for Black communities to feel established, like places in which someone can belong. White flight, redlining, gentrification, overpolicing, and racism have torn apart African American families and communities. Popular culture has always shown the Black man as a violent, bloodthirsty beast, only partly human. Only 45% of Black people can claim homeownership—27 percentage points lower than their white counterparts. Black people make 76 cents for every dollar white people make. For generations, science and medicine have helped perpetuate the myth that Black people don’t feel pain in the same way that white people do, and therefore it’s OK that we suffer more. From my experience within the African American community, I’d only known what it was like to live around people suffering from brokenness and mistrust because of crises like these. With Jared, around our West Indian neighbors, I saw commonality and friendship that I had never thought could happen within a Black community.
Jared’s friendship opened my eyes to the kindness available to me in this world and played a major role in keeping me from sliding back into homelessness. After years of being told I was unworthy, I had started to believe that story. But Jared’s friendship, my community, and the safe, stable housing I had craved since I was a very young child gave me the tools I needed to rebuild my life. I felt nourished by their care and finally able to see the possibilities for my future.
I wish this for the estimated 550,000 to 650,000 people in America without a place to live. Across the country, communities want to address homelessness, but they don’t want programs that would provide more affordable housing in their neighborhoods. The key to reintegrating into society, though, is to be welcomed back into society. Organizations like The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and Black Veterans for Social Justice are helping bring community to those who are unseen in full view. There have even been homeless dating websites, because everyone deserves companionship.
Though Jared eventually moved back to Nebraska and we went our separate ways, he set the bar for friendship high. Today, I’m surrounded by good friends and a supportive community. I’m part of a writing group that has cheered me on as I’ve built up my career. I have close friends who will show up in a crisis—and I’d do the same for them. At Thanksgiving last year, three of us celebrated a wonderful meal at a diner in Chelsea. We took a moment to take stock of our lives and give thanks for our health and for each other, and I felt truly, deeply grateful. I had money to pay for dinner, a safe, cozy apartment on the Upper East Side to call my own, and friends with whom I could walk through life. Jared’s friendship and the friendship of others have welcomed me back into community, restored me to myself. I know what life is like without this. I will never take it for granted.
This essay was originally published on Commonweal Magazine and was co-published and supported by the journalism nonprofit The Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
