How do people fall into homelessness? 3 stories of hardship in SLO County
With hundreds of unhoused people trying to get by in San Luis Obispo County, the stories of how they lost their homes and how they get by are as unique as each individual person.
Some suffered bouts of trauma and bad luck that forced them onto the streets. Many suffer from mental health or addiction issues that consistently undermine their ability to find a stable home. Others simply cannot afford to live here.
Spotlighting their unique challenges and makeshift living situations, here are three SLO County stories about how people lost shelter and what they do to survive.
One family of five was forced to move out of subsidized housing in Atascadero, a SLO woman is on the streets with post-traumatic stress after an abusive relationship, and a former athlete hitchhikes and panhandles across the Western United States.
“All I’m trying to do is get housed,” said Denise Flores, a 60-year-old woman who sleeps near the library in downtown SLO. “I shouldn’t be on the streets.”
Couple raising three kids with no home
Nick Watson, 37, and Amanda (Amy) Watson, 34, have had a turbulent time in recent months.
The married couple cares for three kids from ages 2 to 10 (a fourth child, a 16-year-old daughter, lives in Hawaii with a relative) and has been unhoused for 14 months.
Some used to refer to Nick as the unofficial “mayor of Kansas Avenue,” which was newly renamed Oklahoma Avenue, referring to the county’s Safe Parking area located near the Sheriff’s Office along Highway 1. But he was banned from the site for fighting with another man in March.
“The other guy was revving his motorcycle engine all night long and bothering everyone trying to sleep,” Nick Watson said. “He’s actually my friend. But he’s a drunk.”
Watson — who said he doesn’t use alcohol or drugs — said he had an exchange of words with the noisy neighbor, who he said was inebriated at the time, and in response the man “socked me in the face.”
Watson said he blacked out after the punch, and when he came to, the man was on the ground.
“I don’t know what happened exactly after I blacked out,” Watson said. “But he was on the ground. And they called an ambulance.”
Both men were kicked out of the facility, and the Watson family has been moving around from campsites to hotels since.
That incident came weeks after the Watsons’ good friend, Jorji Coy-Epperly, died in a RV fire at the site in February.
The Watsons, who grew up in Atascadero and Paso Robles, are planning a move to Kentucky, where housing is cheaper.
They were heading to Tennessee in January 2021 when their Chevy Tahoe’s exhaust manifold broke down in Morro Bay.
At the time, the Watsons had just lost their housing, paid for through a Section 8 voucher. The owners told them they were going to sell the house and they had to move out, they said.
Their voucher covered $2,300 in monthly rent in Atascadero, but homes available were priced at $2,400, Amy Watson said.
“They passed that law where landlords have to accept Section 8 as a form of income,” she said. “So what do a lot of landlords do? They say OK, fine. I’m going to up my rent so I don’t have to accept your form of income and you aren’t going to have just enough. They make it just out of reach.”
They have bounced around ever since — camping out in their trailer or burning through savings for a hotel.
Nick has family in Kentucky, where they can find a three-bedroom house for $900 in monthly rent, Amy said.
“At that kind of price, you could come up with that and the deposit and not even touch what they want for one month rent here,” she said. “So we just decided to go back there. We need to get out of this county anyway.”
Nick said that he has worked several jobs in SLO County — as a handyman, a car maintenance worker and taking on some electrical gigs. His favorite position was at Motel 6, where he worked as a front desk clerk, cleaner and maintenance employee.
“Even if they did raise minimum wage, if you don’t stop the cost of living from going up somehow, that won’t do anything,” Nick Watson said. “There’s no solution. There’s no way to stop it. Things are going to get more expensive, and minimum wage will never catch up.”
Watson said that he’d volunteered his services at the Safe Parking site — cleaning up the bathroom, unlocking the shower facility at night and giving food or rides to unhoused people when they needed it.
“When I lived there, people knocked on my window 24/7,” Nick Watson said. “They gave me a key to the shower because the security would leave and people would come home at nighttime and want to take a shower.”
Once Nick gets some needed dental work done, they’ll head out east. Meanwhile, cash is running thin.
“We’re burning through our savings because a lot of the campsites are taken and we’re staying at the Rose Garden (Inn),” Nick Watson said recently. “We’re almost broke again.”
Men with addictions led her into poverty
Denise Flores, 60, says her attempts to help her drug-addicted husband — who died at the age of 55 in 2017 due to an overdose — upended her life.
She wanted him to overcome his habit, but because of the dysfunction in their lives and abuse, they lost their Section 8 housing.
“He was 6-foot-6, and when he was coming down off his drugs, I got scars,” Flores said. “I was abused by him. He could be the nicest person, but to me, no, because I was the only one trying to help him. I was the one saying, ‘You need to get off the drugs for our marriage.’ I saw who he was past all of the stuff.”
Flores was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and still is coping, she said.
Flores arrived on the Central Coast 15 years ago thanks to a prior relationship with an alcoholic man who convinced her to move from out of the area to Bradley near Lake Nacimiento. Shortly after, though, he left Flores and her then 11-year-old daughter, who’s now 26.
“We were abandoned here, away from everything we knew,” Flores said.
Flores has lived off and on in San Luis Obispo County since 2007, and she first stepped into the Prado homeless shelter in 2017. Of late, she’ll stay in the El Camino Homeless Organization (ECHO) in Atascadero occasionally and motels when she can.
Flores said that after her husband died, she moved to Phoenix, where a Target worker helped her through tough times emotionally simply by behind kind and talking to her.
“She helped me during the time I was there, not even knowing how much,” Flores said.
She has been in and out of homeless shelters, also staying for a period in the converted Motel 6 in Paso Robles as part of Project Homekey during the pandemic.
The chaos in her abusive marriage, moves to Southern California and Arizona and losing her subsidized housing during the pandemic have culminated in her sleeping on the steps of the SLO City-County Library most nights of the week.
She said she’s been seeking help through the nonprofit Transitions-Mental Health Association to get her life back on track, noting she wants to find housing and get back to work, perhaps at a clothing shop because she likes helping people choose great outfits.
Toting a pink backpack, Flores takes pride in looking presentable, using public facilities to freshen up each day, including the Mission Plaza and library bathrooms.
“I’m not all drugged up. I’m not drunked out,” Flores said. “People like me who don’t have any substance abuse issues tend to fall through the cracks. I’m on survival mode, and I’m too old to be on survival mode.”
She’s trying to understand now how she has become attracted to men with addictions, which has led her into poverty.
“My picker, my chooser, has been broken for situations, and that’s how I became homeless,” she said.
She wants to work sometime soon, but also wants to heal mentally and emotionally and has had trouble following up on potential jobs.
Living on the streets, Flores said she hears fighting among other unsheltered folks and people with mental illness.
“It’s very humbling,” she said. “It’s very challenging. I’m not acclimated to sleeping outside. I got my sleeping bag stolen. I shouldn’t be out here.”
She was able to get a new sleeping bag through Transitions-Mental Health. She also has been getting medical help for high blood pressure.
“I’m not suicidal, but I understand why people can be,” Flores said. “You have to have hope.”
Former athlete hitchhikes to SLO County
Matthew Googins, 48, said he has moved around often — living in Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Washington and California.
In San Luis Obispo County, he has lived unsheltered in Paso Robles and in SLO, where he was found beside a shopping cart full of possessions at Cheng Park downtown.
Googins said he hitchhiked across several Western states to arrived in SLO County, where he slept under the gazebo overnight during rainy nights in late March.
On a recent morning, he shared some of his life story, repeated himself often, speaking with hints of a Minnesota accent and touching on a variety of topics in a sort of stream of consciousness manner.
Googins recalled past encounters with police, hitchhiking and “a quest” to play in the NFL.
At 6-foot-5, Googins said he was a former quarterback.
“I was going to be the first quarterback to throw both left-handed and right-handed,” Googins said. “I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan. I had my NFL quest in Southern Utah. I wanted to play quarterback, but they switched me to lineman.”
Googins grew up in Colorado and spent time in Minnesota, where he has family, including an aunt and uncle.
“I went back to Minnesota and saw my relatives a lot for two to three years,” Googins said of his adult life. “I actually saw my relatives quite a bit actually.”
Asked if he’d ever stay with them if he had to Googins said: “Would I want to live with relatives? If I absolutely had to I would ... if I was aging.”
Googins has worked in food service, construction and factories, he said.
Now, he panhandles and accepts donations of clothing, such as an “Arroyo Grande Tennis” shirt that fits him too small and a pink stocking cap.
“I had a problem with the police in Paso Robles,” Googins said. “I had to go to court. They dumped me off and I just stayed here (in SLO).”
He said that some nights, especially in Minnesota, it was so cold he thought his feet froze.
“I slept under a bridge once in Salt Lake City and my feet were frozen,” Googins said. “Utah is kind of tough.”
The weather in SLO County is pleasantly temperate, despite contending with a night of rain on March 28.
Googins said that he has been in and out of shelters before, and he is aware of the 40 Prado shelter, which offers beds, food, showers, laundry, medical care and more.
“I might get back to Paso Robles,” Googins said. “I actually have an address up there. It’s a big mission house about five to eight miles outside of the city. I am working to get my driver’s license back.”
At the Chinese pagoda, alone, Googins hung some of his items, moist from late March rain, to dry.
“I slept right under here,” Googins said of the pagoda. “I had a horrible problem with the rain.”
This story was originally published April 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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