Off the streets, on to recovery

One couple’s journey out of homelessness

• Published May 01, 2006

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OLYMPIA — They sold their food stamps and cashed their disability checks to pay for drugs. They performed favors for others to get free methamphetamine and marijuana.

For four years, Mike and Julie Skoczen lived on the streets of downtown. Their home was a faded Ford Taurus, packed to the windows with everything they owned. At night, they slept swaddled in blankets for warmth. They lined the windows with cardboard for insulation. They ran the car heater, when the car was working and there was gasoline in the tank.

Their addiction to drugs stopped them from seeing straight, the couple said. Family members distanced themselves.

“Drugs really mess up your short-term memory,” Julie said. “I can’t remember what I wore two days ago.”

The turning point came last winter when Mike landed in jail. The couple had grown weary of living day to day in a car, of the constant bickering, of wondering when the police would rap on their car window next.

In letters they wrote while Mike was in jail, the couple talked about quitting drugs cold turkey. They talked about getting off the streets and getting into housing. Something had to change, they said.

This is the story of a couple’s descent into drugs and a life on the streets. But it also is the story of their struggle to pull themselves out of addiction and out of homelessness.

“We wrote letters back and forth. We said to each other, ‘This has got to stop’,” Julie said.

Making a change

It took Mike, 33, and Julie, 46, a good month before they got used to the new one-bedroom apartment they moved into Feb. 8. It had been four years since they had lived someplace other than a car, motel or shelter.

“It’s a big change, moving into a place like this,” Mike said as he smoked a cigarette by the door. “It’s a big load off.”

After four years on a waiting list for housing, the couple was able to secure a housing voucher through Bread & Roses, a homeless advocacy group, and move into the apartment in the back of a duplex near the downtown post office.