“You’re gonna find yourself in despair. But don’t let it discourage you.”
Contributor vendor Thomas P. has grown alongside Nashville the last 50 years he’s lived here; he’s watched the city go from a modest hub with a rich musical legacy to the sprawling metropolis it is today.
“Things were different back then. Everything was different,” he said. “Things were a lot less expensive. Work was a lot easier to find. People were a lot more decent. Now they’ve got more like a northern attitude, like they don’t want to speak when you speak to them. Used to be some southern hospitality down here. Ain’t no hospitality no more; seldom you find anybody that’s got any.”
Various biases inform people’s perception of the poor and homeless, and Thomas has his share of stories about how these biases can spoil an otherwise mundane interaction. Selling the paper is a lot about making connections with people, Thomas said, but people won’t always act in good faith.
“I go out there and I try to sell my personality to them, but there’s some people you’re not gonna be able to sell your personality to because they don’t like you. Whatever reason they have in that dungeon they call a mind, they just don’t like you. When I say, ‘How you doing, sir?’ and he acts like he doesn’t hear me, I’ll make sure that you do hear me,” Thomas said. “I don’t want to talk to anyone that doesn’t want to talk to me. I’m a man just like you. I’m an adult just like you. I’m just in a different situation than you. But you’re not gonna discourage me. I’m gonna keep focused, I’m gonna stay vigilant, I’m gonna get my ass up out of this situation, no matter what you think about me.
Thomas’s reason for selling is ultimately that he had run out of options, and it was a way he could make money on his own terms.
“I became homeless,” Thomas said. “I didn’t have nothing better to do, I didn’t want to just hang out on the streets doing nothing … If I’m gonna be homeless, if I’m gonna be on the streets, I might as well have this badge on, and these papers, and sit out there in a spot where people are constantly coming by. And maybe, just maybe, somebody decides to buy a paper; I’m putting money in my pocket. I’m prospering.”
Thomas was housed permanently within the past couple years at a low-income apartment that specifically assists the elderly and disabled, or so it seemed; after a medical scare that kept him hospitalized for months, he returned to no apartment at all. When he most needed to rest and recover with a roof overhead, Thomas was sent back to the streets with few job prospects and lengthy waitlists walling off every low-income bed in the city.
“Well, I went in the hospital, I come out, I had an eviction notice on my door,” he said. “I was in there for diabetes; I didn’t know I was a diabetic and my sugar was around 1200. In other words, I was about to go into a diabetic coma. So they kept me for quite awhile. When I come out, there was the notice on my door: eviction notice. I told ‘em, ‘You do know I was in the hospital, right?’ They said, ‘Yeah, we know.’”
“I said, ‘Well, I guess y’all just don’t care.’”
With no recourse and nowhere to go, Thomas returned to sleeping outside and selling the paper; though it was more precarious this time, as statewide law had mandated public camping was illegal, severely limiting the places Thomas can safely sleep. It’s only after a months-long search involving numerous organizations and housing applications that Thomas finally moved into a new apartment again last month.
The new apartment will give Thomas a chance to recuperate physically, and finally enjoy some of the things he can’t while living outside, he said.
“It feels damn good,” he said. “I don’t have to be scratchin’ all the darn time, things crawling on you while you’re sleeping. Things are a little bit better. It’s gonna be better … I like to cook. I watch cooking shows, something inspires me, that’s what I like to cook.”
He said the rarity of this sort of opportunity wasn’t lost on him, and that some unhoused people have had so many similar chances at housing elude them that it’s drained all their hope.
“Some of these people don’t have any hope, man. They don’t have any hope. I knew a woman who had a daughter, and she’s got a big old house and wants her to come live with her, and she’d rather stay out here in the damn streets. I don’t want that. I want to be able to turn on the heat when it gets cold, turn on the air when it gets hot, have a roof over my head when it rains or snows. Wake up when I want to, sleep when I’m ready. Eat what I like. You can’t do that out in the streets.”
Thomas is grateful to God for it all, and has a word of advice for anyone trying to get off the streets: stay on a righteous path, and don’t let despair keep you from chasing your aspirations.
“The Lord is a righteous God, you can’t get away from him. He’s a righteous God, he’s gonna do the righteous thing. He shows favor on those who he chooses to show favor to. All I can tell anyone is just keep vigilant, man. Do the right thing. Don’t be no fool for nobody, just stay focused … we used to say, ‘keep your eye on that sparrow.’ The road to damnation is wide, but the road to salvation is very, very narrow. Stay on the path.”