How an Associate College Professor became homeless in the USA

On this day, 51 years ago, Mike was born. Mike taught Art at a college in Cincinnati. He was passionate about his career. He was a very good artist with two graduate degrees in Fine Art.

Mike cared about the success of his students deeply. He always made time to talk to them, both about art and about their private life and went out of his way to foster each student's talent. After he had been teaching for 8 years the college shut down and everybody got laid off.

Mike had struggled with depression throughout his teaching career and was hospitalized for it twice. Though he had enjoyed what he was doing, it was very hard for him to get up and get to class on time. After Mike got laid off, he became severely depressed. After 6 months his employment insurance benefits ran out. He had nowhere to go and couldn't pay his rent anymore.

Mike's parents were already deceased. He contacted his two brothers, who lived in nice houses (one with his family, one was single). He asked, if he could stay with either of them for a while, but they both turned away from him, because they didn't want to have anything to do with his depression.

So Mike got in touch with one of his old high-school friends, who owned three houses. One of them stood empty at the time. It was a run down house in a bad area of Columbus. His friend allowed Mike to sleep on the floor for a while. Upon hearing this, Mike packed whatever he could of his belongings into his car and left the rest behind.

When Mike asked his "friend", if he could lend him some money for food, though, his "friend" replied, he doesn't lend friends money. Mike resorted to donating blood plasma regularly and bought canned pasta with the money he received in order to survive. He slept on the floor with a blanket he had had in his car. He just wanted to die. Mike attempted to kill himself several times, but was unsuccessful.

Mike felt like an outcast: rejected, forgotten and worthless. Feeling like this only worsened his pain. Something kept him alive, though. After several weeks of mostly lying deeply depressed on the floor of this house, he got himself to the nearest library and searched every day for nearly a month for a job on one of the libraries' computers. Finally he found a job at a company who made lenses for glasses. His job was to call the customers from the company's office, when the company hadn't received their frames yet. A couple of weeks into this, Mike's "friend" told Mike that he had to leave his house because he wanted to sell it. He said to Mike, that after all, he had a job now. When Mike objected that he didn't have made enough money so far to move out yet, his "friend" stood firm.

With the little money Mike had earned, he found a small apartment to rent. Mike had just enough money for the first month's rent, but he didn't have enough money for the damage deposit. Luckily the new landlord let Mike pay for his damage deposit in installments.

Mike hated the job at the lens company. It had nothing to do with what he had studied in university and he couldn't use his artistic talent. After two months he found a job at a high-school for underprivileged children. Mike enjoys his job very much. And every time he sees a homeless person, he gives them a few dollars.