Being Homeless Is 'The Most Horrible Feeling In The World'

WASHINGTON, DC — For Marcellus Phillips, experiencing homelessness is a terrible feeling.

"Not having your own place, not knowing where you're going to sleep at night, not having any stability at all. It's the most horrible feeling in the world," he said.

Some nights, when 41-year-old Phillips was living on the streets, he was able to find a place to stay, often on the floor of someone's apartment or in a corner.

"It's like being naked, walking around in the streets," he said. "You don't have anything. It's hard to have hope. It's hard to have motivation when you know that you don't have your name on the lease and you can't have your own key and go in your own door. You walk around. You watch people do stuff that you want to do, but you can't because of your circumstances."

In his early life, Phillips and his family drifted between living in Washington, D.C., and suburban Maryland.

"My mother kind of had to steal me and my sister back from my grandmother," he said. "She did that because she didn't want us going through D.C. schools. The outcome of that really wasn't too swell, because moving to Maryland, we could never afford the places we lived at. So it was always borderline. As a kid, I never stayed in one spot longer than two years."

One year the family would move into a new home, Phillips would make a new set of friends, but then a year later it was on to a new home and another school.

"When you're a child, you don't have control over what you go through with your parents, you just do as they say," he said. "You got to succumb to the circumstances the best way you know how, and that's only from what your parent tells you. So as a child, it was rough because I never had any stability."

During his senior year of high school, Phillips moved back to D.C. to live with his grandmother and uncle. He was able to go to school in Montgomery County, Maryland, and earn all the credits he needed to graduate on time. Unfortunately, his grandmother was dying of cancer at the time and his uncle was away frequently for work, so it wasn't like he had parents there to help him.

On top of all that, Phillips learned that he had epilepsy, a seizure disorder that limited his post-high school options. He could live in a home health aid program or move back in with his mother, which in the end is what he decided to do.

"Bad thing about that was I got used to that," Phillips said. "And then that was like I was staying with my mother, no matter what. Instead of trying to get out there and get my own place and do my own thing, I succumbed to the circumstances and the situations that I was comfortable with. So I never tried to step outside of the box."

Back with his mother, Phillips found himself experiencing the same cycle of uncertainty he'd endured in his youth.

"This is something I've dealt with all my life, being put out of the house and trying to figure out where are you going to live the next day," he said. "What you're going to eat? That's not to say that my mother was a bad parent or that she didn't do what she was supposed to do. No one can predict what's going to happen in life. She tried to do things a certain way. It didn't work out, so we just had to deal with it the best way we could."

Throughout this unstable living situation, Phillips continued to seek out jobs, but his disability made it difficult to find anything long term or lasting.

After living on the streets off and on for years, Phillips eventually learned about Street Sense Media, a nonprofit organization with offices at The Church of the Epiphany on G Street in Northwest, D.C.

"The first and primary need that we meet here is employment," said Brian Carome, CEO of Street Sense Media. "The men and women who come here are looking for a chance to make a living, to earn some money for themselves. We can give that to them, pretty much on the day that they arrive. We offer orientations for new vendors every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the year."

Street Sense is what's called a "street paper," the model of which started in the mid-198os in New York City and has since spread all around the world.

"We publish a newspaper that reports on homelessness and poverty and solutions to homelessness here in the local area," Carome said. "The men and women who are homeless, who are in need of employment, work with us as independent contractors to distribute the newspapers. We call them vendors, selling the newspaper throughout the city, buying it wholesale from us, and then turning around and selling it retail to customers on the streets."

As a vendor, Phillips has sold newspapers to D.C. commuters, which not only helped him to earn money, it added stability to his life. He also took advantage of the support services Street Sense offers, such as access to a case manager.

"I was frightened to get my disability case because I can't work," Phillips said. "I'm not allowed to work and do things that a normal person does because I have epilepsy. So she was able to help me win my disability case by getting me a free lawyer where I didn't have to pay for anything. She helped me fill out any type of paperwork. She went to any appointment I had to go to. She was there, she supported me, motivated me. And she is the reason that I got my disability."

Now that Phillips has regular disability support, he has access to medical treatment and medication for his epilepsy. He's also been able to secure housing.

Going forward, Phillips wants to help other homeless people experience the success he has found. He's always on the lookout for other men and women living on the street who might benefit from Street Sense's services.

"Everybody's story is different, but people tend to look at the homeless and think that automatically they must be on drugs or they must have done this or that," he said. "They used to see me and think that I was a gentrified or I shouldn't be selling the paper. Walking past me, not realizing I can't work like you. You don't take the time to really find out that person's situation. So listen to them, at least give them a chance, give a person a chance before you automatically assume that that person is whatever it is you may want to make up in your mind."

This article is part of our 2020 contribution to the DC Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the day at DCHomelessCrisis.press.

You can also join the public Facebook group or follow #DCHomelessCrisis on Twitter to discuss further.