Homeless in Seattle: Two men share their journey to get off the streets

SEATTLE -- When we first met 52-year-old Nicholas Clark, he was trying to save $250.

Clark said he owed the money to a technical college in Kirkland, and would have to pay the balance in full before he could get back into classes.

“If I get all this together before April I can get registered, hopefully, for class,” he said on a recent morning, sitting on a bench in Seattle’s City Hall Park.



Clark moved to Seattle from Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2010 because he heard “there is a lot of help in Seattle for the homeless.”

A machinist who once made parts for Cushman golf carts, Clark said he has an idea for a tool that would help workers install tile faster in homes. He wants to finish school and open a machine shop.

But trying to balance education with a life on the streets is difficult.

Clark said he couldn’t study late at the shelter where he was staying, and would sometimes spend nights at the ferry terminal poring through textbooks. If he came home from classes too late to get a bed at the shelter, he said he would have to ride the bus all night.

“Being homeless hindered my grades. I couldn’t focus. I’m worried about where I’m going to eat next, where I’m going to sleep next,” he said. “I had to take this semester off in order to get my housing right before I can go back.”

There was also the issue of money.



“After tuition and everything was paid, I had like a couple hundred dollars left. Who’s going to live on that?”

Struggling to stay in school, Clark was approached by outreach workers from the Metropolitan Improvement District (MID), which helps to connect the city’s homeless with the services they desperately need.

Jackie St. Louis, who was hired as MID’s street outreach manager late last year, spends two to three hours a day out on the streets, getting to know people like Clark.

“These are individuals who, if we assist them, can contribute to this city. Who, for whatever reason may love this city and feel like they have something to actually give this city,” said St. Louis, who leads a team of six.

St. Louis and his team have also offered to help 60-year-old Larry Lowry, who would like to go back to school to be a welding instructor.

“These are all things that can be accomplished. It’s just a matter of doing it,” said Lowry, who knows that permanent housing is key if he hopes to focus on his education.

“Being homeless and trying to juggle between being homeless and trying to do everything else is hard,” he said.

St. Louis said both Clark and Lowry defy many of the stereotypes we may have about the homeless.

“Misconceptions: homeless people are drug addicts. They’re all mentally ill. Outcasts of society who are uninterested in leading a pro-social and functional life,” said St. Louis, who frequently follows up with people he meets to make sure they stay on track.

“What they do, day in and day out, is really try to provide that bridge to get them the services and the help they need,” said James Sido with the Downtown Seattle Association. “It is a process and it’s not something that can simply happen overnight.”

But even with frequent outreach, not everyone wants the help St. Louis and the Metropolitan Improvement District have to offer.

“He wants to help me out and do all these things, which I’m really down for, but he won’t do it unless I get off drugs,” said 24-year-old Jordan Wright, who said he has been homeless since 14.

Wright met St. Louis after hitchhiking up from Denver a few months ago. He said he has no interest in getting off drugs, but still meets with St. Louis occasionally to talk about his long-term goals.

“He has just remained committed to this lifestyle,” St. Louis said. “I accept that he’s not at a place where he wants to discontinue using substances, and we are talking about that ambivalence.”

St. Louis said he hopes Wright will eventually be ready to start the next chapter of his life – much like Clark and Lowry. Until then, he’ll continue to lend a hand to anyone on the streets of Seattle looking to turn their lives around.

“It’s the responsibility of being human,” St. Louis said. “And the responsibility we have as human beings is to genuinely be interested in the plight of another person.”

You can learn more about Jordan Wright’s story by watching the first of our two-part series on Seattle’s Homeless. Just click here.