Drugs led Josh, 38, to life on the streets

In early 2021, he pitched a tent in the bushes behind the Holiday Inn. For the next year and a half he took food out of dumpsters, like discarded pizzas at Little Caesars shortly after 8 every night. When the weather was bad, he looked for a house with a red “X” that indicated it was abandoned, and broke into it. This led to a few breaking and entering charges, plus a few for petty theft.

But Josh, 38, didn’t care about any of that. Because he was high.

“It was tough,” he told The Citizen on Friday. “All I could think about was drugs. I didn’t care about anyone but myself and I would do anything to get away.”

Many homeless people in Auburn also have substance use disorders, Josh believes based on his experience living among them. To him, she was heroin and molly. The latter is a popular synthetic drug believed to be like ecstasy because of its name, but much more dangerous and addictive, often because it is altered with fentanyl. It’s so easy to get into the city, he said, that people come looking for it.

That’s why some homeless people in Auburn aren’t from there, Josh believes. But most of those he met on the street are, and he knows firsthand how much it will take to help them. The 80-bed shelter on Grant Avenue approved by the planning board this summer is a good start. Most important, he said, is the plan to have addictions and other supports available on-site.

Josh wishes someone would lend him a hand in that hedge. In the absence of this support, his addiction worsened. Just as drugs made him homeless, being homeless made him use drugs.

“Drugs made me think everything was fine,” he said. “Living like that, it didn’t bother me.”

Facing two years in the Cayuga County Jail for his most recent entry charge in May 2022, Josh realized something had to change. He begged to go to drug court, thanking coordinator Carol Colvin for accepting him. After nine months in rehab in Pennsylvania and four months in a halfway house, he returned to Auburn, picked up a construction job he’d quit and found an apartment to rent.

Josh has been sober since November 4, 2022. Now, he said, he wants to help people who are going through what he did.

“Everyone thinks there’s no help, but there really is,” he said. “Not all are bad, not all are thieves.”

The best way to help people who are homeless, addicted to drugs or both is to understand where they are coming from, Josh said. Like many, he came from trauma, in his case, from an abusive home. He grew up in Union Springs, but his parents separated when he was 3 years old. Two years later, he was living in Auburn with his mother and stepfather. He started using drugs as a teenager and continued into his 20s.

It was after his mother died about five years ago that Josh’s drug use turned into addiction. He lived in Melone Village with a girlfriend, working as a cook at the Bluewater Grill in Skaneateles.

Then COVID-19 happened. Having $800 a week in unemployment to spend on Molly made her addiction worse, she said. He even overdosed once, and was revived by Narcan administered by his girlfriend.

“All I spent my money on was drugs,” he said. “I wasn’t paying rent.”

Josh said he and his girlfriend were charged $1,200 to leave their place in Melone Village because of the eviction moratorium during the pandemic. The Auburn Housing Authority, which manages the complex, confirmed to The Citizen that the payment was made to Josh’s girlfriend after her lease was terminated for cause. A representative added that such payments were not common practice at the time.

Josh and his girlfriend then moved into his stepfather’s house, then his mother’s house until they were evicted for not paying the rent. They lived briefly in a tent behind a friend’s house on Seymour Street before going to the Department of Social Services and entering the current shelter on Grant Avenue, run by Chapel House. But they didn’t like it, he said, and left after a few weeks.

Some friends let Josh and his girlfriend stay with them for a while. Before long, however, he began living in a tent in the hedge behind the Holiday Inn.

“I drove by that place where I stood the whole time, like, ‘How did I do that?'” he said. “I can’t believe I lived in this little bush for almost two years.”