Street Roots vendor profile: Mark Rodriguez gets an apartment

Mark, who enjoys feeling safe inside, says the transition from years on the streets ‘has been interesting’

by Helen Hill | 21 Feb 2020

After three years and four months living on the streets of Portland, Mark Rodriguez has his own place. Among other changes, he finds his appetite has improved.

“This morning I got up and made two eggs with toast and butter. Then I went back to bed. On the bus on the way here, I was starving!” he said. “I never got hungry like that before.”

Mark recently got a room at Jolene’s First Cousin, a Guerrilla Development communal living project in the Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood. He has his own room and shares a kitchen and bathroom with 10 or so other tenants.

“When I first moved in, I went to sleep and crashed. I just wanted to sleep. Bathing used to be a big issue; the only place I could bathe was the Mission, but now I can take a shower whenever I want, two times a day if I feel like it. It’s a pretty shower. It’s hand-tiled. It’s a community shower, but only one at a time. It has a locked door, which is a real switch. A place to sit down, a rug. We keep it real nice.”

I asked Mark to describe what it’s like to be indoors after more than three years on the streets.

“Being inside, it’s soft and relaxing,” he said, “but the transition has been interesting. Believe it or not, I had gotten used to it (being homeless). Every day I would go out and I would get so busy with the day, so happy in the day, then night would come and I would think, ‘Oh no.’ But any sidewalk would do. It was like I was making a big figure eight. Was the day productive, I’d think? Well I didn’t get a place to live, but I’m still alive. I’m still here.”

Mark remembers the time he nearly froze to death a year ago.

“I was all covered up in snow,” he said. “I was freezing, but I didn’t know I was freezing. They sent the police over to find people. They came to me and said, ‘Hello, hello. Are you in there? Are you all right?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I guess so. I guess I’m all right.’”

“When I was on the streets, I got really used to it. I resigned myself to thinking this is it, there’s no place for me but the street. I really believed that. Now I am housed, and I’m confronted with things I didn’t have to deal with on the streets,” he said.

“It seems I had to be more creative on the streets,” Mark said. “I don’t remember the bad parts. I’d be screaming at the top of my lungs when people stole things from me.”

Some readers may remember Mark from an incident this winter when he was ticketed on TriMet after failing to tap his pass. The community support was overwhelming, and with the help of several readers, he was able to pay his fine.

DIRECTOR'S DESK: Street Roots vendor cited by TriMet: Where is their sense of grace?

Mark enjoys the new feeling of safety and community he has in his new place.

“I have a locked door, a window I can shut and lock. We have chores. We have weekly meetings to keep things together.”

Another significant development for Mark this year has been his participation in Gather:Make:Shelter and the academy that has sprung out of that project. In the Gather:Make:Shelter Academy, housed and unhoused artists meet at the studio of Dana Lynn Louis for collaborative projects.

“I’m in the academy now,” he said. “And a lot has came out from that. My art and poetry is coming from a pure place; it rises up and breaks new ground through the shit we are walking on,” he said.

“This is a good time for me. I love people. I have quiet times. It’s great to go in and close the door. Such solitude.”

Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.