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Not all streets are paved with gold

Stryker
Posted October 13, 2014

Hollywood may not sound such a bad place to be homeless. But for one man who was pitched into life on the streets of Los Angeles, the reality was a nightmarish journey that tested his sanity and his faith to their limits.

Stryker is a pianist and entertainer who will travel from his home in Los Angeles this month to fundraise for South Auckland Community Ministries, in conjunction with World Homeless Day.

 A naturally gifted pianist, Stryker toured US churches as a gospel performer in his youth and was once a youth pastor. Twelve years ago, he was focused and self-assured, producing and directing television, film and live events. His career was on a steep upward trajectory.
 
Then, one weekend when he was away from his studio and its attached apartment, his landlords, who were in financial strife, sold his NZ$200,000 studio equipment, dumped the rest of his possessions, including his art and years of musical compositions, and fled the state.

Now homeless and without the means to support himself, Stryker’s friends who had basked in the glow of his previous successes would not return his calls. Betrayed, his career, plans and dreams seemingly demolished and with only the clothes on his back, the intelligent and sensitive Stryker was crushed. Depression and suicidal thoughts now became his constant companions. ‘I was defeated and this was my plight … now I had nothing, not even a future.’

After two weeks of tears and struggling to function, he says he adapted to the long days of walking—a life where there are no thoughts of tomorrow—just the minute-by-minute search for food or cardboard boxes, bushes or waste land to sleep, and learning the skills necessary to survive on the streets.

‘When you see homeless walking with their heads down, it’s not because they’re necessarily defeated,’ he says. ‘They’re looking at the ground for a quarter, a cigarette, a paperclip to use for something—always studying the ground because that’s where your treasure comes from. It became a new way at looking at life and looking at existence.’

The only respite from the daily search for the essentials of life were the fleeting friendships with other street people and the quiet moments to share a cigarette or smoke methamphetamine, a drug Stryker says was easier to obtain than food.

He had one escape route from this life: his mother. ‘My mother had supported my family her whole life and I felt I was too old to go back and have her support me now. I wouldn’t put that burden on her.’ He refused to take money from his mother, but accepted vouchers for a fast-food restaurant. He wouldn’t beg and accepted only one meal from a charity during his time on the streets.

As the months went by, the polished and sophisticated Stryker was stripped back to a salvager and gatherer. But his humanity stayed intact despite his personal trials. He says the most heart-breaking aspect of life on the street was the teenagers who engaged in prostitution to eat. He counselled these teens, listening to their stories and giving them whatever he had in the hope they would just not get into the next stranger’s car.

‘Probably the hardest thing I had to deal with was watching these young children—just 16—prostituting themselves to men.’ One in particular whom he helped was a young African-American boy who had been kicked out of home after telling his parents he was gay. Stryker gave the boy fast-food coupons his mother had given him in an effort to reduce the sex work that funded the boy’s daily survival.

The traumas of a year and a half on the streets were taking a heavy toll on Stryker. He says his belief in God remained solid. ‘But it challenged my faith, and I still deal with that.’

One day, Stryker stood on the edge of a seven-storey car park building overlooking Hollywood, where he occasionally slept. Like most days, he was considering suicide. Unable to jump, he asked God for a gust of wind to push him into space. ‘Then I thought, “I’m too close to the edge. I have to make a choice: either call Mom and go home or end it, because I’m not going to remain in this way of life.” I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there—that and the thought of my mother standing by my coffin were the power points that kept me from ending it.’

He was painfully aware that without an address or phone, homeless people face an almost impossible task of getting off the streets.

Stryker went to live with his mother, but after his 18 months on the street he was traumatised and immobilised by depression. Slowly recovering, he did a few casual gigs at piano bars. Ironically, what jolted him out of his despondency was his mother’s diagnosis with cancer. Stryker now became the main breadwinner, taking on more work and eventually being headhunted to entertain for a cruise ship line, where he has become one of the main entertainment draw cards. His mother is now cancer free.

Throughout his recovery, Stryker battled depression and was plagued by urges to go back to the streets, and the emotional scars of those days are healing but are still present.

‘One thing you learn on the street is that you have no one to answer to and no responsibilities, apart from where am I going to sleep? what am I going to eat? he says. There’s a freedom there—a screwed-up freedom, but as we adjust to living on the street, that becomes your liberty.’

Returning to a community where you have to adhere to social norms, plan ahead and take responsibility for your actions, income and property is a very difficult process, Stryker says. ‘Those things can be very, very scary and the longer you stay on the street, the scarier it is.’

Stryker’s concert in Auckland on October 19 is to raise funds for South Auckland Community Ministries, which this year is dealing with a spike in families living in overcrowded and unhealthy accommodation or being evicted from their homes.

In just one week recently, the centre had 20 families in crisis seek help but could not house them because of a lack of emergency accommodation.

Community Ministries Director Pam Hughes says the situation is now dire. The main cause of homelessness and overcrowding is that income increases for families already living at subsistence levels are outstripped by rising rents and overheads, along with a critical shortage of affordable and adequate housing.

This has led to an increasing number of evictions of low-income families in South Auckland this year, leading to poor credit ratings, which in turn make it almost impossible to rent another property. The Salvation Army’s alternative is to move their families into caravan parks or boarding houses, potentially hazardous places for children.

Pam says the proof is all over South Auckland including cases of several families living on one property, sleeping in unlined garages and sometimes in cars and caravans. ‘If children are to have a chance to gain an education and avoid the skin infections, respiratory disease, rheumatic fever and the other diseases of overcrowding and run-down housing, they need a healthy, affordable and long-term home.’

  • Stryker in Concert: A Story of Hope | Sun 19 Oct, 7 pm at Auckland Grammar | Tickets from www.eventbrite.co.nz

By Jon Hoyle (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 4 October 2014, pp10-11
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.