Resident Stories

you might associate with a professor or a preacher. But most of his life has been spent in trouble with the law and drugs. “I’ve never had a problem getting things,” he says. “It’s keeping them that’s been tough.”

It all began with a chaotic childhood. Cleveland never knew his father. At various times he lived with his great-grandmother, his grandmother, and his mother. Living with his mother meant being beaten by his alcoholic stepfather. As a teen, Cleveland shuttled between reform school and foster homes. Not surprisingly, Cleveland graduated from juvenile delinquency to adult crime. He found himself in the Virginia State penitentiary in the 1960s, an era when the state still had chain gangs.

“I was out there with chains and a water boy—the whole thing,” he says.

Drugs, alcohol, and prison continued to be the themes of Cleveland’s life for more than four decades. He was living in Seattle with his longtime girlfriend in 2008 when an evening of drinking led to an arrest. “I knew I had to change,” he says.

He told his caseworker he wanted to go into alcohol treatment, and on the day he was released, he went right into a treatment program. When he was done, one of the biggest challenges Cleveland faced was finding a permanent place to live. He dreaded returning to the street, where it was hard to keep clean and out of trouble. “I knew that with a prison record, landlords just won’t take you,” he says.

That’s where Plymouth stepped in. “I just needed a chance,” he recalls. “They gave it to me, and I’m so grateful that they did.”

In June 2010 Cleveland moved into his own home in the Gatewood Apartments. After years of eating fast food, he’s learning to cook nutritious meals to control his diabetes. He keeps a notebook of his activities, and has befriended a stray cat. Every day he attends AA meetings and recently appeared before a King County legislative forum to speak in support of the rehabilitation and treatment programs that are in danger of being cut.

The West Seattle native was a busy mom, working for city agencies, and raising two girls and a boy. After 17 years of marriage, she weathered a divorce and ended up in a relationship with an older man who was also her business partner in a pottery store. When Carol Ann was in her early 50s, her partner died, leaving her a very comfortable inheritance.

But that’s when mental health problems emerged. In just a few short years, she recklessly spent everything she had. “I just threw money around,” she says, shaking her head at the memories. Eventually, even her children gave up on trying to reason with her.

By 2007 Carol Ann was reduced to living in her car, often in a parking lot in a Burien shopping center. She went weeks without a shower, managing to keep clean with water and paper towels. “I just remember it being so cold,” she says.

She tried living in a homeless shelter but found the people there, many of them using drugs and alcohol, “too frightening.”

After four months of living in her car, Carol Ann’s health deteriorated badly. She had asthma, bronchitis, and diabetes, as well as a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. After several trips to Harborview Hospital, she was referred to the mental health ward. From there, she was discharged to the House of Healing, a short-term facility that helps homeless people emerging from hospitalization find an alternative to living on the street. They helped Carol Ann connect with Plymouth Housing Group, and find a home at Plymouth’s St. Charles Apartments.

“The best thing about the St. Charles was the staff,” Carol Ann says. “They were awesome. They treated me in a way that made me feel valued again.”

With the support of her Plymouth case manager and social worker, Carol Ann followed through with all the medical care and mental health treatment she needed, from cognitive therapy to gym workouts that helped her get her weight under control. She got back on her feet again — so quickly that after two years at the St. Charles, she was ready to “graduate” from Plymouth to subsidized housing.

Carol Ann now lives in an apartment building on Beacon Hill where she can entertain her daughter and her new grandson. “I have my own place now, and I can handle my own money,” she says. “I no longer feel the urge to buy, buy, buy.”

While at the St. Charles, Carol Ann was more than happy to give back to the Plymouth community by serving as a tenant representative on Plymouth’s board of directors. “I learned how people come to live at Plymouth, and how Plymouth does what it does to help them,” she says. “Being on the board, speaking from client’s view, was a big part of my own evolution.”

…retired from the military in their 40s and now contemplating retirement from their civilian jobs. He thought he’d be like the people he worked with in the aerospace industry, where he was a punch press operator until he was laid off in February 1982.

Although Danny didn’t know it at the time, that 1982 layoff was the start of a downward spiral that would last more than 25 years. Subsequent, lower-paying jobs were a disappointment to him. He embarked on what he thought would be a lucrative stint in the drug world. Soon he was involved in drug and alcohol abuse, and eventually found himself living on the streets—on and off for 12 years, with a low point during which he lived four years without a home.

At one point, Danny even went to prison on drug and assault charges. “I was well beyond hitting bottom,” he recalls. “I was a walking zombie.

“I know that, for me to get there, I played some part in it,” he says ruefully. “You don’t end up in prison for going to work every day.”

In early 2008, Danny completed a drug treatment program. The counselor there helped him get in to Plymouth’s new Langdon & Anne Simons Senior Apartments. It was a big break for Danny. As a veteran, he was able to afford subsidized housing, but as someone with a criminal record, he couldn’t find a landlord willing to take a chance on renting to him.

In February 2008, Plymouth Housing took that chance.

“For the first time in years, I found myself with a sense of my own responsibilities, and being accountable for my actions,” Danny says. “Moving to Plymouth settled me back down.”

He attends a group for people adjusting to sobriety, but he says the most heartening change in his life has been re-bonding with friends and family. He’s now back in touch with many people in the small Georgia town where he grew up, and he gets together with the 26-year-old son he’d lost touch with.

Danny talks about eventually moving back to his hometown, but for the time being, the apartment at Simons is home. It’s attractively furnished and neatly maintained. And, for someone coming from years on the street, it’s safe.

“It was strange at first to realize that I am somewhere that I can put something down, go to the bathroom, come back, and it’s still there,” Danny says. “Living at Plymouth has brought a sense of security back into my life.”

That sense of security is also a foundation for growth. In the living room, beneath the window, Danny has arranged items representing several spiritual traditions — including Hindu, African, and Christian — to mark a space where he goes to reflect and center himself.

“I work on myself each and every day,” he says. “I feel like I’m a person with potential.”

… she followed the family tradition and received a Fulbright award to study in the U.S. She went on to establish a distinguished academic career, with a Ph.D. in mathematics and papers published in major journals.

But mental health issues that surfaced in her 40s deeply affected Dr. Savi’s life. She became unable to work, or keep a stable home, and at one point, she found herself relying on the Salvation Army in Columbia, South Carolina, for meals. Later, she tried living with relatives in the Seattle area, but that did not work out. By early 1990s, the diminutive mathematician was unable to care for herself and living in a homeless shelter run by the Union Gospel Mission.

It was there, in 1992, that an outreach worker from Plymouth approached Dr. Savi with an offer of permanent housing. Plymouth had just purchased The Gatewood, and was creating apartments with on-site case management services, a program specially designed for people with mental health issues who needed safe, supportive housing.

“Plymouth discovered me,” Dr. Savi recalls. “I became one of the first people to live here.”

The historic Gatewood building, just across the street from the Pike Place Market, has been Dr. Savi’s home for 18 years. “This is a good place to live,” she points out. “And it’s affordable for me.”

With help from her Plymouth case manager, Dr. Savi has obtained an aide from the King County Aging and Disability Assistance program. He takes her to appointments and helps with her housekeeping. Her Plymouth case manager helps her keep track of her medications. “Anything that I ask, they help,” Dr. Savi says.

While she doesn’t go out walking as much as she used to, Dr. Savi continues to visit friends around town. At home at The Gatewood she cooks, reads, and works on mathematics problems. She often has trouble carrying on a conversation, or remembering how to complete certain daily activities, but Dr. Savi still works daily on trying to solve a complex mathematical conundrum. She tell us she’s developing a proof for the Goldbech Conjecture, an 18th century math problem that postulates that “every number that is greater than 2 is the sum of three primes.”

She also loves to play games like chess and solving puzzles. “As soon as I open the paper, I look at the headlines and then I do the Sudoku,” she says. Her dark eyes light up, and she leans forward in her chair to explain, with the animation of a born professor. “For a mathematician, the mind never rests. You always want to do something.”

It’s an unusual admission of discouragement for this articulate and upbeat 25-year-old man. But what he calls the “shifting of reality” is why Jerrico wound up homeless at 19. It’s why he needs a safe, consistent place to live.

Jerrico grew up in New York City, attending a competitive public school program affiliated with a prestigious university. He excelled in math, and did an internship with a Manhattan theater company. After high school graduation, he went to work at the theater as a stagehand.

Around this the time, what appeared to be teenage experimentation with drugs and alcohol masked something far more sinister: the beginning of a disabling mental illness.

Jerrico soon lost his job at the theater. His father, who had been living in the Seattle area while Jerrico was growing up in New York, invited Jerrico to come live with him in Washington. Unfortunately, Jerrico’s psychological problems became increasingly severe. He was no longer able to live with his family and had to be hospitalized. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. There was a period in which he went back and forth between living in the hospital and living in temporary housing.

A caseworker at the hospital approached Plymouth Housing to see if Jerrico could find a permanent home there. Clearly, he needed a place to live in a community that would be supportive while he struggled to manage his mental illness. Plymouth offered him a studio apartment at Plymouth Place, and it’s been his home for nearly five years. He’s filled the sunny studio with posters, artwork, and comfortable furniture for friends who come by to visit.

Jerrico says he’s amazed and grateful at how staff and caseworkers at Plymouth have helped him deal with difficulties ranging from hospitalizations to alcohol abuse. The Plymouth Case Manager worked with him to create a contract that provides structure and addresses his immediate problems. Plymouth also approved his application to have a pet—a sleek, handsome cat named Puro is now his constant companion.

“I don’t have to do it alone,” he says with a big smile. I’m very happy with the home I’ve got here.”

… as she enthusiastically chats about her interests. Just about the only time her face clouds over is when she talks about her housing history — moving from apartment to apartment, and spending time in shelters and on the street. Under the strain of those memories, her words just trail off…

For most of Vivian’s adult life, housing has been a problem. Unable to hold a job, she relies on disability payments to get by. Before coming to Plymouth, Vivian was in a transitional housing program in Seattle that provided dinner and overnight shelter but required that clients leave each morning and return in the evening. So Vivian passed her days at a nearby day center for women or at the public library.

She was nearing the end of her allotted time in transitional housing when her case manager connected Vivian with Plymouth. In April 2008, at the age of 62, Vivian got a chance to break her cycle of homelessness. She moved into a sunny third-floor studio apartment at Plymouth with private bath and kitchen, paying 30 percent of her income for rent.

A bookcase in one corner is filled with her mystery novels, Harry Potter DVDs, and do-it-yourself crafts books for her many projects. And a handsome Himalayan cat, Apollo, provides company and entertainment, hopping down occasionally from his cat perch to bat at a cat toy on the floor.

“I love it here,” Vivian says. “I have lived in buildings where I got to know only a few people. Here at Plymouth, I’ve really gotten to know my neighbors.”

Sitting at her kitchen table, she describes social activities that include the building’s Thursday potlucks, monthly community meetings, a knitting group, and shopping trips. Now that she has a kitchen—something she missed while living in shelters—Vivian does her own cooking, planning to make a lasagna for the next potluck event. “I’ll stay here at Plymouth as long as they’ll let me,” she says with a smile.