By David Minton, Contributing writer
She was a good-looking blonde from the back, holding a sign that I couldn’t read because she had it facing the off-ramp traffic and I was rolling down SE Glisan Street toward the city center.
I turned the car around and went back, parked on a gravel pull-off on 92nd and walked to where she was perched on a guard rail, with a back pack and a huge purse on the ground. She wrote her name in my notebook: Honoria C. Thomas.
When I asked her if she was homeless — “out in the open” is the way I put it — she became defensive. She said she’d started working when she was 10 years old in her hometown (Billings, Mont.), but said now she’s disabled and receives a $500-a-month disability pension.
“I was diagnosed as bipolar when I was little,” she said, “and was re-diagnosed in 1991 and then again seven years later. And I had a car accident that injured my back permanently, so the number of jobs I can hold is limited.”
Her husband, who is also bipolar and “has a bad knee injury,” was thrown into jail two days previously, so she explained that she was soliciting cash to make her $300-a-month rent. She said she needed to raise about $22 and she’d been out there 30 minutes and had gotten $1.50. I gave her a $20 bill and struck up a conversation.
She remarked that the motel where she was living wasn’t so great, “but it’s better than being on the street. I don’t mind camping out, I like camping out sometimes, but a lot of weird shit happens out there. People are not nice.”
She and her husband, who is from California, met at an A.A. meeting. They lived in Tacoma, Wash., for a while but Tacoma is a rough town, she said. “We pitched a tent in a park with some other people, and in the middle of the night some guys came and stuck a screwdriver in my husband’s face. They wanted to rob us but we didn’t have anything to give them. You don’t want to be homeless in Tacoma. Portland is definitely better. There are lots of homeless people here, that’s why they come here, because it’s a good place if you have to be out in the street.”
What did her husband get thrown in jail for? I asked.
“He wouldn’t want this known, but — shoplifting. We were desperate because we needed food.”
Her landlord, she said, had been good to them in the past, letting them pay rent late if they didn’t have it on the due date.
“But lately he’s been belligerent. He’s picked fights with my husband. So now I guess he’s going to throw me out if I don’t get the rent. That’s why I’m out here.”
Thomas says homeless people are generally typecast as threats or a general menace to society and that this generalization is wrong. “There are lots of talented people out there. Just because they’re on the street doesn’t mean they’re not talented. They’re just having hard times or they want to camp out for the experience of it. Some people like camping out for their own reasons.”
I ask her if she’s ever been homeless for a prolonged period of time.
“We’ve been homeless off and on for the last five or six years,” she says. “In emergencies I’ve solicited rent (on the street). Some days I get skunked, other days I can get what I need in a half hour.”
Did she grow up homeless or in a lower-class home?
“Not really,” she answers. “I’ve done modeling and made good money at that, but I can’t do it now with my back injury. I’ve worked with horses, showed them, bathed them, fed them. I’ve had all kinds of jobs.”
She won’t tell me her age, but she looks to be in her 30s, with sun-baked skin and clothes that are worn but not ratty.
I ask her about her future — what’s she going to do in the long run?
She says she doesn’t know, that she’s going to take it one day at a time.
I ask if I can give her a lift anywhere. Yes, she needs a ride to a market on 102nd. She leaves her backpack by the guardrail, saying, “no one will take it,” covers it with her cardboard sign, brings her purse. She limps badly as we’re walking toward the car. It looks like she’s in real pain.
She gets out of the car at the market.
“You want me to wait and drive you back?” I ask.
“No, I’ll be alright,” she says. “Thanks. Let me know when the article will be out if you see me standing on the street somewhere.”