From 4/17/11, Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal:
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
Anthony Cordray’s routine for the past decade has revolved around a mile-square block of Downtown Albuquerque.
Breakfast at the Albuquerque Rescue Mission around 6 a.m., then a walk north to St. Martin’s Hospitality Center for a shower. Albuquerque HealthCare for the Homeless is a few blocks away for a cup of coffee and a medical or dental appointment or some socializing in the courtyard.
For lunch, it’s back Downtown to Noon Day Ministries, then a job moving furniture if one avails itself or to a park with whatever novel he’s reading if one doesn’t. At 5 p.m., he heads back to the Rescue Mission for dinner. After dinner, Cordray peels off from the others and goes to the sleeping spot where he has stashed his belongings and settles in for a restless night.
Cordray has been homeless in Albuquerque, except for a stint in prison, since 2002. He has lived on the streets nearly continuously since he turned 18.
“It’s a very addicting lifestyle,” Cordray told me the other day as we sat together Downtown. “You’re not going to go hungry here. There’s food everywhere. Showers, clothes, medical. You basically don’t need for anything except a place to stay.”
It’s also dangerous, tiring and really boring.
You spend the day on the move to keep from being hassled or arrested. You worry about your stuff being stolen. You spend hours waiting for the next thing to happen. And you sleep with one eye open, hoping somebody doesn’t roll you for your sleeping bag or your bus pass.
Cordray is not a young man anymore, and he is ready for a different life, one that’s more settled, safer, with a purpose.
“I’m way ready,” he told me. “I’m tired.”
In February, when the Albuquerque Heading Home organization fanned out across Albuquerque in the coldest cold snap the city had ever seen, volunteers walked the streets trying to identify and interview all the city’s homeless. After the homeless census was complete, all the data from those interviews was plugged into a computer program to identify the 75 most vulnerable homeless people. Characteristics associated with vulnerability, according to the survey, are age, time spent on the street, injuries, diseases, mental health issues, and visits to jails, prisons and hospitals.
When Cordray took that survey on a cold afternoon on Gold Street Downtown, his answers made bells ring.
He is 49 and has been homeless for most of 30 years. He has shattered his hand slugging a guy who was bothering him while he slept, he has hepatitis C and problems with alcohol, he’s bipolar, and he has post-traumatic stress disorder from childhood abuse in a series of foster homes. Cordray did stints in prison in Los Lunas and Grants for battery on a police officer in a domestic dispute with a girlfriend’s family and, due to persistent viral papilloma growths in his throat, he has had surgery dozens of times.
With all of that, Cordray had the distinction of scoring highest on the vulnerability ranking, making him Albuquerque’s No. 1 most vulnerable homeless person.
Albuquerque Heading Home’s survey was more than just an exercise in information gathering. Its purpose was to match the 75 most vulnerable with apartments or rental homes, moving them to safer, more stable ground for a one-year period.
Much of the motivation is humanitarian; it’s not the mark of a great city to have people sleeping under bridges.
But Dennis Plummer of the Metropolitan Homelessness Project said there’s also a bean-counter component. If more of the homeless find safe and comfortable accommodations — homes — their health might stabilize, they might use fewer social services, or at least less expensive ones, and they might be able to work or go to school.
For Cordray, an apartment is a chance at a different life. Cordray went apartment shopping with his case manager at HealthCare for the Homeless and picked out a one-bedroom unit in a complex in the Northeast Heights. It’s on the second floor with a balcony, and there’s a pool, a gym and a computer room.
Cordray will pay $64 a month from his general assistance income toward rent, and a voucher from the Supportive Housing Coalition of New Mexico will pick up the rest. The staff at New Mexico Legal Aid’s Albuquerque office has taken care of furnishings.
Cordray has all sorts of plans. He wants to learn how to use a computer, to take classes at Central New Mexico Community College and eventually to get a dog.
Those are the big things. But the small things are what make Cordray break into a smile.
To be able to decide what he wants for dinner and make it. “I love to cook,” Cordray says.
To decorate and hang his clothes in a closet and sleep soundly.
“Being in my own place, in the quiet,” Cordray tells me, “I can’t wait. I’m going to hibernate.”
Cordray signed his lease and picked up his keys Friday. We’ll check in with him from time to time to see how he’s doing in his new life at home.
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or[email protected]. Go towww.abqjournal.com/letters/newto submit a letter to the editor.
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