Homeless in Elko: Andrew Hockenberry

This guy is Andrew Hockenberry.  He is homeless. He lives here in Elko, and his home is his van.  He works a full-time job as a dishwasher at Red Lion. He's 42 years old.  He was born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT.  He came to Elko because his kids needed help.  The housing market is tough here and, between his child support payments and his minimum wage job, he doesn't have enough money to be able to afford a place of his own.

When it gets below freezing, he buys a propane tank and fires up his camp stove so that there is enough heat to catch at least a few hours of sleep. When he isn't working at the Red Lion, he spends time holding a sign at one of Wal-Mart's exits, hoping for a few dollars here and there.

 This isn't his first bout with homelessness, in fact he's spent about 15 to 16 years total being homeless.  He says the hardest thing about being homeless is staying clean - mentally, physically, and with the police. It's easy to get discouraged, to feel like giving up on life.  He says what homeless people need more than anything else is love - to know that someone cares, to know that they matter to someone. His advice to other homeless people is not to give up.  Even if you have to spend a week asking for help, and you get nothing, keep trying.  It will come eventually.

To get a bath, he often slips in to a restroom.  Sometimes, if he can't do that, he buys a jug of water and finds a deserted spot in the woods.  When he gets enough change, he does his laundry at the laundry mat. Food isn't a problem.  He is on food stamps, and there are plenty of places in town that offer food to people in his situation.

He doesn't have a post office box.  He has people send his mail to the Elko post office attention: General Post. He has a cheap, pre-paid cell phone that he uses to make phone calls. Before he had one of those he was able to use the phone at the JOIN office (Job search aid office here in Elko) to make calls to and receive calls from employers. He doesn't belong to a specific church. He says he is non-denominational, although he was raised in the Mormon faith. He doesn't make it to church all that often.

This is Andrew, and this is only part of his story. Like most people, he has way more story than can fit in an hour or two long interview. Like most homeless people, he doesn't fit the stereotype.  He's not a drunkard looking for his next bottle of booze, or a junkie looking for the next score. He's a person who has made his fair share of mistakes along the way but is struggling to make up for those the best way that he knows how. The real difference between those who are homeless and those who aren't isn't the number of mistakes they have made in life, it's the size of the community they have around them who can help pull them back to their feet when they fall.