Ron and Vince
Client Profile: Ron and Vince
 and Ron (right) on wall.jpg "6-3-Client Profile-Vince (left) and Ron (right) on wall.jpg")
Last year as part of our quarterly Client Profiles Column in the Semaphore, I wrote a profile piece on an North Beach Citizens client named Vince. The article outlined Vince’s journey from life on the streets to life indoors and discussed North Beach Citizens’s involvement in Vince’s struggle. Since the publication of that profile, Vince has continued working an assortment of jobs and volunteering at North Beach Citizens and in recent months has become a Peer Advocate for a homeless friend of his named Ron.
Ron, 64, moved to San Francisco 30 years ago from Western Pennsylvania. He worked as a cook for his first 14 years in San Francisco. Sixteen years ago, Ron became jobless and homeless after his body succumbed to the weight of years of smoking and physically taxing jobs. Vince and Ron met when Vince first became homeless in North Beach.
Ron was a veteran of life on the streets who had developed supportive relationships with a handful of the businesses surrounding his doorway. Vince was a newcomer anxious to learn the ropes of street survival. After feeling each other out, the two slept in adjacent doorways for 5 years.
Fast forward to the beginning of 2007, housed and stable Vince decided he wanted to increase his involvement at North Beach Citizens beyond helping with maintenance, deliveries, and cleanup. He had struggled through the process of obtaining valid ID cards, a livable income, and suitable housing. But, when it came time for him to act as an advocate, Vince felt empowered by his own experience and was eager to pass on the insider knowledge he had acquired to motivate Ron to act, to assuage Ron’s fears, and to expedite the process.
Vince knew where to go, how long it would take, when to buckle down and push through and when to step back and start anew the next day. In the first day alone Vince and Ron trekked across the city to the California DMV at Fell and Baker Streets to obtain Ron’s CA. I.D. and then to the Social Security office on Kearny St to request a copy of Ron’s Social Security card—two items of absolute necessity when fighting through the bureaucracy often encountered when applying for benefits, medical insurance, and housing. Throughout, Vince referred back to the advice and encouragement he had received from North Beach Citizens.
Currently, Ron is waiting to receive his first Social Security check and adjusting to his new life indoors—made immediately possible by North Beach Citizens’s Housing Stabilization program. Ron is still encountering numerous health problems, but he is now able to address the quality of his life instead mere survival.