Home for Now

Robert Beau Michaels thought he knew himself until he became homeless. More than four years spent in and out of Santa Fe shelters, sleeping outside or crashing on the floor of a friend’s woodshop changed the 74-year-old musician, writer and Navy veteran, he tells SFR.

Thanks to assistance through a local housing program, Michaels recently put a roof over his head, but it’s come with the toll living without a home takes. He’s one of 31 veterans in Santa Fe County this year to find a home through Goodwill Industries of New Mexico’s Support Services for Veteran Families program.

The program is one piece in a mosaic of government- and privately-run efforts to provide Santa Feans shelter. City officials are exploring avenues to get emergency, temporary or permanent housing to unsheltered people. Community outreach workers estimate about 150 people live on the streets. City-approved camps, where homeless people would have quicker access to social services, portable toilets and trash pickups, are among the city’s considerations.

Now, Michaels is one fewer person experiencing homelessness.

Pam Russom, marketing director for Goodwill’s Senior Leadership Team, tells SFR that as much as the nonprofit tries to share information about its housing services, the program still comes as a surprise to people.

“A lot of times we can place homeless veterans within a matter of hours or days of contacting us into permanent housing, which is really huge,” Russom says.

Prior to this month, it had been a harsh few years for Michaels.

In 2018, he returned to Santa Fe after 11 years of teaching English in Prague. When he last lived here in 2007, a realtor had found him a home that charged $400 in monthly rent. When Michaels got back to the states, though, he was “astonished by how much rent had gone up,” he tells SFR.

“I didn’t save enough money to come back,” Michaels says. “Within 10 days I was out of money, I had no job, and I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

For four months Michaels stayed at the St. Elizabeth Men’s Emergency Shelter. He sent out job résumés and landed an interview at a resale store. But he says his liberal arts degree from the University of Georgia and master’s degree from the University of St. Thomas in Houston make him seem “overqualified.”

The floor of a friend’s workshop was his next stop. Then, in October of 2018, he went to the Interfaith Shelter at Pete’s Place, but after seven months, three stolen backpacks and three fights, he’d had enough. He decided he’d never stay in a shelter again.

For the next year and a half, he slept outside.

“It’s hard to sleep outside for one main reason: You’ve got to sleep with one eye open, because you don’t know who is going to come and try to knock you in the head and rob you,” he says.

In 2020, when local shelters were required to limit the number of people due to the pandemic, Michaels secured a room at the GreenTree Inn. After three people were killed there last year, the owner reportedly decided to stop renting rooms to shelters. By July of 2021, Michaels was back on the streets, where he would stay until last December. That’s when he was admitted to the hospital after developing a callus on his foot.

Doctors told him he had sepsis and amputated his big toe and part of his foot, requiring a month of physical therapy. In March, he tested positive for COVID-19, placing him back in the hospital.

Michaels returned to the floor of his friend’s workshop after that, until help came his way via Goodwill’s housing assistance program.

Funded through a grant from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the housing program is available across the state. Veterans can visit any Goodwill store, where a case worker will help them recover identification and military records needed to qualify.

Rent is covered for the first several months. Once veterans are more financially stable, Goodwill pays 50% of the rent for up to two years. It’s a housing-first program, meaning participants are not required to find employment.

Russom tells SFR while the organization encourages people to find work, each case is different.

“For some veterans, that means obtaining employment,” she says. “For others, it means applying for permanent supportive housing or applying for appropriate benefits.”

Michaels says he’s happy to work, despite what people who yell at him as he panhandles on Cerrillos Road may think. While in the Navy in 1967, he worked on a depot ship for submarines before spending another five years in the Navy Reserve. He’s also been a truck driver, framing contractor, retail manager, restaurant manager, gym owner, cinematographer and more. As a musician, he’s produced 23 albums available on various streaming platforms.

His true passion, though, is writing. He has self-published two books: The Cosmological Society: Foundations of a Cosmic Vision of Life, and Take This Job and Shove It!! The latter tells the story of a US president who decides to tell the “dirty, inconvenient truth” about American corruption.

Michaels says his stints without a job were a choice, leaving him space to focus on doing what he loves.

“When life plants this energy, this passion, this fire, this creative drive inside of you, you have to go with it, or you’ll go out of your mind,” he says.

A sleeping bag, lawn chair and suitcase are all that occupy Michaels’ new apartment, but he’s found respite from the years of turmoil. He’s working to earn money for some furniture, a laptop to continue his writing and about $400 to publish his latest novel, Somewhere Between Light and Darkness: Conversation with the Devil.

“Everyone should be homeless for a little while, because homelessness introduced me to myself,” he tells SFR. “I believe life put me there for that reason, to help me in my career as a writer and to open up my mind. I realized I was judgmental as hell before that, overly critical, selfish and an asshole. I have a shadow a mile long and I embrace every fucking inch of it. I’m not going back; I’m going up.”

The City of Santa Fe will host a roundtable town hall meeting on homeless encampments from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm, Tuesday, Aug. 30. Wednesday, Aug. 24, is the last day to register for the meeting.

To register, email amares@santafenm.gov or call (505) 955-6520.