Debby Eckland says she wants to sign up.
She wants a place to live, a real place to live, not a small space under some branches and twigs, like her winter home behind the Friendly Kitchen used
to be.
Her eyes widened at the thought of a front door and a toilet, of running water and some privacy, of things, simple things, she can call her own.
“Right now, this roof over my head does me no good,” Eckland said, sitting
on the downstairs couch at the McKenna House, the Salvation Army’s temporary housing facility on South Fruit Street.
“It’s a one-day-at-a-time thing.”
She wants more. She wants a home.
Trouble is, Eckland, who’s been homeless for 15 months, knew nothing about Housing First Concord, a rental subsidy program run by the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness, meant to help get people just like her into long term housing.
While there are no easy solutions to Concord’s homeless problem, Housing First presents a firm path away from the illegal
campsites on state, city and private property.
Ellen Groh, the executive director of the coalition, said she and others are in the process of creating a waiting list for homeless people looking for an apartment. It could happen next week, or it might take a couple of months, but it’s coming.
But before that door swings open to a new life in a city apartment, documentation is needed showing chronic homelessness, or
12 months on the streets or in a shelter, and confirmation from a qualified professional that an illness “significantly impairs the life function,” Groh explained.
“We want to make sure no one is scamming the system,” Groh continued, “because it does pay the person’s rent.”
It’s a shot that those who might qualify would be wise to take, because the state police have issued a May 3 deadline – for homeless people who illegally camp on state or private property – to move on, or risk arrest.
Meanwhile, local police are set to begin bike patrols through hard-to-reach homeless camps, as complaints have mounted and the weather has warmed up.
Eckland lived in the woods behind the Friendly Kitchen. She lived there during a Nor’easter, and she lived there during the icy rain storm that hit us earlier this month.
She’s 57 and lived in Texas and Michigan before settling in Stratham 20 years ago with her now ex-husband. Her face is a mixture of past beauty and current hardship, with deep lines and moist eyes now dominating.
Her Facebook page, however, tells a different story. There, you see photos of a woman who shone. There’s a photo of Eckland standing in front of a fireplace, celebrating her 50th birthday in a flowing, plum-colored skirt, with her hands in the air, as if to say, “Look at me, world.”
There’s a photo of Eckland standing in her kitchen, with a pot on the stove and a microwave in the back. There’s a picture of her wearing a black cowboy hat, as though she’s ready for a night of line dancing.
And there’s a picture of her at the Keene Pumpkin Fest, wearing something right out of the Wizard of Oz, an orange Good-Witch-of-the-North-type dress. Eckland is holding a little girl in the photo. She’s wearing a tiara. She’s beaming.
“It was a hobby of mine, a costume designer,” she told me. “I’d gone to events over the years, walking down the streets in parades. I was the pumpkin fairy queen. I would tell the children I’ll put dust on them and help them grow.”
Her dues-paying process included a job at a 7-Eleven, a promotion to training director, a 401k retirement plan and health insurance.
Her marriage ended when her son was three, 12 years ago (He treated her to lunch at Cheers last weekend). The divorce settlement plus her savings allowed her to remain in her home in Stratham, but when the money ran out, she sold the house for $300,000, she said, and pocketed $180,000.
From here, the story turns dark. Eckland claims a man she trusted – “charming and debonair,” she called him – swindled her out of her money and left her in the dust.
“Left me in a van in Manchester,” Eckland said. “In a Best Western Hotel parking lot in Manchester.”
She was homeless and broke, living in Manchester for a while, hiding in the city’s parks, dealing with cops who said she was trespassing, then missing ensuing court dates and landing in the Valley Street jail for a month.
She said she suffers from fibromyalgia and a disease that weakens her defense against mold, adding that she’s often in pain from head to toe.
She said she suffered a concussion when a homeless woman slammed her head against the ground in Manchester, a beating that continues to cause memory loss.
In fact, Eckland says that after living behind the Friendly Kitchen in March and April, only a recent Monitor column on homelessness jarred her memory and reminded her that there might be a bed for her at the McKenna House.
There was.
She sat on the couch, dressed in a flowered dress and sandals. She cried and blew her nose a lot, and when she heard that a local program might provide her with a permanent home, she began jotting down information, writing furiously on a small calendar, as though the material was precious and could disappear at any moment.
Eckland said she expects to receive signed medical reports proving her illnesses. She’ll figure out later how to document her timeline of homelessness and get it to the coalition.
“I’ll get it done,” she said. “I will.”