Olivia Brown - 32

If you saw Olivia walking down the street, you wouldn’t know she’s homeless. With dark skin, neatly quaffed hair and clear brown eyes, she doesn’t seem like your stereotypical homeless person. She isn’t a drug addict, an alcoholic or a lady of the night; she’s just a victim of unfortunate circumstances.

At the age of 32, Olivia seems jaded to life, but not apathetic. When I first approached her, she was friendly with a suspicious eye, with every right to be. She’s been homeless for three years, has been a tenant to five of the shelters on the island of Oahu and currently residing at Next Step Homeless Shelter. When I sat down to have dinner beside her, I had no clue what I’d discover but she was more than willing to share her story.

Three years ago, Olivia left the United States Air Force. She had enlisted at the age of nineteen but decided that after eight years, she wanted to move on. Having saved enough money, she decided in 2007 to depart from her duty station (Hickam Air Force Base) to pursue her own internet health business. She poured her heart and soul into the business, but was unfortunately scammed by people she said were similar to the “Nigerian scammers” we see in emails nowadays. Having lost everything she owned, with family members in a similar financial plight and few friends, she suddenly found herself facing homeless in the face. Scrambling to find income, she started a job selling vacuums for Kirby Enterprise, yet only after a month, received only IOU’s from customers not truly interested in the product. Her rent became out of control, her funds depleted and was finally evicted by her landlord for lack of payment.

Since she was forced to become homeless, Olivia has lived in five of Oahu’s shelters. Due to the possibility of being charged with a lawsuit, I cannot share exact details of what she said she experience or rather, where she experienced them. As an overview, the first shelter she stayed at mixed recovering addicts with sober people, required a rent payment of $200 a month after living there for three months and felt incredibly micromanaged and harassed by shelter employees.

Luckily, Olivia finally found a job located on Schofield Army Base, working twelve hour shifts on the weekend. She traveled three hours each way to work a job she said was similar to being a “gofer”. She held this job for two years and would have continued, if life hadn’t struck another blow. During this time, she had been transferred to the transitional housing that the shelter she resided in provided, paying $455 a month in rent. Despite all of these steps forward to creating something better for herself, in May 2010 she found herself with debilitating back pain so severe, she could barely lift a folder at work. After a visit to the ER, the doctors informed Olivia that her spine was collapsing due to underdeveloped back muscles. Forced to complete physical therapy daily, she had to quit her job at Schofield.

Learning from past experience, she had saved enough money to pay her bills for seven months, along with accumulated paid vacation from the Schofield job. The money unfortunately ran out in October 2010 and in a fury to find assistance, she contacted over 10 different Oahu based charities and agencies and was denied by each and every single one, for various reasons. Some required her to have a job for them to pay her rent, yet she couldn’t get a job without a home and credit history. The more time accumulated as unemployed also disqualified her from some agencies, as some employment agencies won’t accept you if you’ve had more than six months of unemployment. It seemed like an unending vicious cycle that she couldn’t escape.

Finally, in March 2011 she was removed from shelter she had lived in for years, due to her inability to pay the $455 rent and sent to a different shelter instead. Drama ensued from the previous shelter, which involved Olivia informing me that, “You truly appreciate your freedoms when someone takes away your rights.”

After moving to four different shelters, Olivia was put into contact with Care-a-Van, a mobile outreach program dedicated to helping Hawaii’s homeless and educating them about their options. They put her in contact with Next Step Homeless Shelter, where two weeks ago she was processed and moved in.

Every day, Olivia is waiting for the other ball to drop. She’s hiding her identity (hence the lack of picture) to protect herself from the harassment she has received from the other shelters. Her current plan is to find a part time job, which is difficult with her persistent back pain. She’s looking to join a “rent to work” program locally, which will pay her rent up to a year. All she truly wants is a place of her own; a place she can say is all hers.

Olivia is just one of thousands of homeless people in Hawaii and her story is undoubtedly not unique. If you feel like you want or need to do something, please contact Kapua at Next Step at no7tani@aol.com to receive information about donations and volunteering opportunities.

Ron Cullen - 51

When I first met Ron Cullen, he was sitting at the smoking area of Next Step shelter, puffing on a hand rolled cigarette. He sat there quietly, almost sleeping at times, while I sat and conversed with another gentleman about Hawaii colleges. When he woke up to roll another cigarette, I began to realize what a hidden gem he was and what a story he had. Ron is 51 years old and a native Californian, originating out of Pasadena. Living there almost his whole life, he worked in the IT field, employed with a company called Earthlink for three years. In 2003, Earthlink decided to sell a number of IT jobs to India, giving people like Ron two months to prepare for the inevitable layoff. Working in the computer industry, he knew he needed refresher courses, so he began to attend Microsoft certification classes. Unfortunately, his mom became sick and died in 2004. This delayed his ability to finish the Microsoft courses and when he sold his mother’s house, he decided to take the money and move to Hawaii, the island of Kauai to be exact.

At the age of 45, Ron knew it was time to begin anew, so he started going door to door, offering his computer knowledge to those that needed it. When this didn’t exactly pan out as planned, he took up a contract with a company called Coinstar and a DVD rental company for three years. Eventually, after three years, the money ran out and almost at the same time, he lost the contract to Coinstar. He almost immediately became homeless in Kauai and tried to make it there. When he realized there was a serious lack of opportunity on such a small island, he moved to Oahu in May 2010, hopeful for a chance at finding a job.

Oahu itself wasn’t as welcoming as he had first hoped. Within the first five weeks, he had five phones, his electric guitar, bike and $180 stolen from him. He immediately had to become street smart, finding the need to protect himself from the competition that Oahu seems to hold within the homeless community. He created his own place to live in Kaka’ako Park, but in March 2011 the state government removed all of the homeless people in Kaka’ako, forcing Ron to finally take shelter at Next Step. While he isn’t a big fan of the rules, he says staying at a shelter is useful. It’s impossible to find a job without a shower, decent clothes or even an address. He hopes that staying here will benefit his long term goals of having a job and a place to live.