[Editor’s Note: Chip Supanich is Co-Chairman of the Community Outreach Committee at Marty’s Place, as well as a long-time advocate and activist for the homeless and HIV communities. This excerpt from his unpublished memoir details Chip’s experience as a homeless HIV-positive man finding housing in San Francisco.]
Just this instant, I’ve come from having breakfast with Kevin, something we do some Friday mornings at nine o’clock. I look forward to those breakfasts together, because Kevin is more than my friend. He’s a sounding board for my crazy and not-so-crazy ideas, a confidante, and a counselor. He’s also outrageously funny, devilishly handsome and helps to anchor me when I feel lost or upset. And, he’s been my angel on more than one occasion.
The first and most important time he was my angel was with respect to my homelessness…. I went to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation because I had been told that they provided vouchers for local SRO hotels (Single Resident Occupancy), where you basically get a room with a communal bathroom down the hall and no cooking facilities to speak of. Well, guess who was the caseworker I saw one afternoon in November of 1995?
Kevin was kind and thoughtful and seemed to really be sorry that I was in the situation I was in. I remember sitting there listening to him explain the voucher program. Basically they gave you 21 days’ worth of vouchers and that was it. I was grateful for what I could get because we had nowhere to sleep that night. He gave me a list of hotels that would accept the vouchers and that was about all he could do for me at that point….
[My companion] Jack and I ended up at the National Hotel on Market Street that evening. I didn’t want to go to any of the hotels in the Tenderloin, because at that time I was intimidated by that notorious neighborhood. It can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing and look like a victim. But these days, I walk through it with hardly a second thought. The stark urban landscape of the Tenderloin doesn’t intimidate. In many ways, it’s a community like any other. Besides, I had been living near battle weary Detroit and Detroit makes the TL look like West Palm Beach.
The National Hotel was a dilapidated maze of small rooms situated on corridors that bend at odd angles. I did not like it. It appeared to be entirely inhabited by gay men of a certain sort – kind of cute, fairly young, and a little shady. Simply walking to our room involved catcalls, suspicious glares, and once overs. It reminded me of 1960’s television versions of prison, actually. The hallways were dirty and there was trash strewn about. It reeked of a nauseating mixture of marijuana and tobacco smoke and piss.
Jack found our room and we piled our luggage and ourselves into a tiny space no bigger than the average walk-in closet. It contained a bed. That was it. So, we did the only thing we could do in that room. We climbed into bed and stayed there. We slept for twelve hours or so, checked out the next day, and never went back. I don’t even remember using the bathroom while a guest there. That was my inaugural residence hotel experience. I was not enamored.
From there, we traveled a little up Market Street to the Chase Hotel near Market and Ninth Street, a lateral move by most standards. While the rooms were bigger and there was more furniture than a bed, the place was dingy and so were we and our neighbors. The bathroom was atrocious, complete with clogged toilet, missing stall doors, a filthy mildewed shower and a suspicious and perennial pool of brackish water in the middle of the floor. I might imagine that there was a drain under there in need of a snake.
We spent the rest of our hotel vouchers at the Chase… and then came our illustrious stay at the Union Square Hilton around Thanksgiving time, and Jack’s subsequent arrest and incarceration. I was on my own then for about a month. I did not fare too well….
[After months spent with family members in Florida and California, Chip returned to San Francisco. – Ed.]
My life expectancy in 1995/96 was 18-24 months (again), so I could reasonably expect to have some medical issues crop up soon. That it was “only a matter of time” was the best medical advice I could be given. With that possibility looming over my head, I was feeling anxious about being so far away from San Francisco, where the best AIDS care in the country, if not the world, was found. San Francisco General Hospital and UCSF were at the forefront of care. And dozens of community based organizations in the city and county were contributing to the delivery of the San Francisco model of care, which included all needs of patients, not just medicinal ones….
Now, this is a wild story, involving several angels, “coincidences”, and serendipitous events, the confluence of which resulted in my getting my cute little apartment in Hayes Valley in the city. And here’s where Kevin M. returns to the story. He was pivotal to it all. Unbeknownst to me, he had been assigned to be my housing caseworker….
[What followed was a complicated series of serendipitous events and chance, much of it good, but not all of it– Ed.]
I was down to my last twenty dollars. I had lost hope about finding an apartment…. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, my health, or my life. Once again, here I was with a serious situation on my hands, and I was feeling hopeless.
I had to let it go and let the Universe take care of me. I knew my best efforts couldn’t solve the problem, so I went and played pinball! At least that was something I could control, that would validate me, that wouldn’t hurt me. And just about the time I made that internal switch from wanting to control everything to simply handing it over to the Universe, well then things started happening!
Meanwhile, my AIDS was surging…. I was severely fatigued and my joints and muscles throbbed in pain. In addition, I was wasting away – I weighed less than 140 lbs. Diarrhea, loss of appetite, insomnia, anxiety and depression were pretty much constant. I was able to function, to take care of my personal needs and to get things done, but it physically and emotionally hurt me to do so. I was getting chronic sinusitis and peripheral neuropathy, temporal headaches and Gastro-intestinal infections. It was painful to be me in those days.
[Through a series of serendipitous events, Chip reconnected with his caseworker Kevin M. and secured an apartment in the Hayes Valley section of San Francisco. – Ed.]
In essence, Hayes Valley has transformed itself from the central city‘s most blighted district into a destination for locals and tourists alike and made my living arrangement the envy of my friends. I have a sweet deal and I know it. But really, I did go through some shit to get there, didn’t I?...
There were twelve people who had to do very specific things at just the right times in order for me to be able to stay in San Francisco. Here, in this city, is where I really grew, matured and flowered as a person. This is where I found meaningful work, dedicated colleagues, exceptional friends and a climate I can stand. I am so firmly cemented in this apartment and in this great city. I can’t imagine living anywhere else for very long. I can’t imagine what my life would look like today without Kevin M.’s influences….
I can’t predict the future much, but I hope Kevin is in it, keeping an eye on me. He’s my good luck charm and a trusted friend.