Michael
"I Did Not Choose To Be Homeless"-Michael Kelly
Written by Florence "DeeDee" Riffe
The tent of cast-off fabrics in the woods off Main Street-cold, ramshackle and filthy-is a different world from Michael Kelly's blue house at the corner of Morehead and Carroll in Durham-comfortable, orderly and clean. Michael lived in the tent in 2006. His Habitat house was dedicated in 2010. Between is a story far more gripping than the tale of the Ancient Mariner. And he tells it with that fervor.
"White Mike," fifty-ish and articulate, lived in a Bermuda Triangle, as he calls it, on converging property lines of the City of Durham, Duke University and the Norfolk Southern Railroad. Straddling property lines off Main Street, though, wasn't nearly as difficult as staying alive by panhandling, especially when most of the money bought cigarettes and beer. Staffers from Housing for New Hope sought him out in the woods from time to time, urging him to consider their assistance, but he turned a drunken ear.
He had not always been a bum. A decade ago Michael Kelly was living the American Dream with his wife, three children and two jobs. Then his wife left-with the children. The pain of losing his family led to drinking, which led to job loss, which led to the tent and more drinking. He does not flinch when he details the internal bleeding and near-death experiences he suffered, the second one etched in his memory by "the sensation of falling through the mattress of the hospital bed into the morgue in the basement." Finished with the horror story, the tears fall when he says he thought of his children at the nadir. "They can't know I died like this," he thought at the time. He has had no contact with his children for years.
It was Housing for New Hope that provided the spark that kindled his quest for redemption after the scrape with death. He sobered up, and went to work for the organization as a security guard, moving ever upward through improved jobs, a car purchase and his own apartment. He yearned to return to homeownership. When Michael first applied to be a Habitat homeowner, he was denied because of his credit rating. After much paperwork and proof of his creditworthiness, he was selected. Triangle Builder Garman Homes sponsored the blue duplex, a color Michael chose because "the other choices were shades of brown, and I had slept on dirt for years."
Today Michael still works for Housing for New Hope in a program named PATH, which is an acronym for Projects Assisting the Transition from Homelessness. As the name implies, he links down-and-out people with social services, and no one could be more credible about their needs than Michael. "God wanted me to learn by what I went through," he said. While he is helping others who did not choose to be homeless, he is also applying for college to learn in a more formal way about Human Services.
"White Mike is gone," he said. "Now I'm Michael." He says his mother named him for the archangel who led the forces of God against Satan. She will never know how aptly she named him, but his children may yet find out.
This is one of the 25 stories included in Habitat of Durham's 25th anniversary history book, Building Hope Equity: 25 Years With Habitat for Humanity in Durham, NC. The book was written by DeeDee Riffe and designed and produced by Linda Barnett as their gift to Habitat of Durham. To learn how you can purchase this book and support Habitat of Durham's mission, click here.
