Q. How do people become homeless?

A. For a lot of our people, poverty didn’t start last week. Poverty started from the cradle. Or in their lives before, they knew all this, but something so traumatic and so shocking and so horrible happened to them to make them homeless, it’s almost like post-traumatic stress syndrome where they can’t remember.

Q. Why do you think people choose extended stay motels?

A. They have some income but there’s not enough affordable housing, so they’re forced into these kinds of living situations which actually take advantage of them. $125 a week sounds cheap to them, when in reality we’re talking about $500 a month, but when they start looking at apartments, they feel like they can’t afford an apartment at $500. It’s a real issue.

Q. The alternative for some residents of extended stay motels are the shelters, living in their cars or living on the streets. Could you describe what life is like for people who are in these situations?

A. The missions are only open at night, you have to stand in line to get a bed so it’s really the luck of the draw whether you’re going to get a bed and whether you’re in the mission or out on the street, you can’t really sleep, so sleep deprivation is a huge issue.

The missions are very crowded, they’re bunk beds and they’re tight. It’s very tight, so you’re surrounded by people you may or may not know, with people who you more than likely you do not trust, so you have to be very guarded.

The same is true when you’re sleeping outside. When you’re sleeping outside you have to be aware at all times .... You could get bitten, you could get beat, you could get robbed, you could get burned, you could get killed. Terrible things happen to homeless people.

The first Thanksgiving I was here I went down to the Grateful Gobbler walk. It was early, still dark in the morning and there was a homeless man in the bathroom at Coolidge Park and his face was all bloodied and nasty and he was washing it at the sink in the bathroom there. And I said, ‘Sir, i don’t mean to intrude on you but I work with homeless people and i think you might be homeless and, ‘What’s happened to you? Have you been beaten up?’ and he said, ‘The rats got to me.’ and I said, ‘Excuse me?’ and he said, ‘Well, it was really cold last night so I bought a little pint of vodka because I thought that would keep me warm, and I went to sleep and I didn’t wake up when the rats started chewing on my face.’

When you’re on the street or in a mission and you don’t really sleep, ever, you get a little warped.

Q. How are homeless or low-income people treated by our society?

A. In America, we identify our self-worth with what we have. So when we say, ‘What is that guy worth?’, we’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s worth $2 million.’ So having grown up in that culture when we don’t have any wealth, when we live in poverty, live in homelessness, our self-worth becomes diminished.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like to add that is important to understand about homelessness?

A. We are by nature people who seek kindred people. And we are not designed for isolation. That is why the most terrible punishment that we can give someone is solitary confinement. It is the most unspeakable punishment we can think of outside of torture, physical torture, because loneliness is a terrible thing. And the need for community and the need for a place to belong is different from housing. A place to live does not make it a home. And we are seeking a home.

My first four years here I lived at St. Matthew’s shelter and I would see guys there who at the shelter did really well, related to one another, formed relationships, then when they went into an isolated apartment, they’d be back on the streets in two weeks. Finally one of them was a 72-year-old named Don and Don got an apartment and three or four days later Don called me and he said, ‘Define homelessness for me.’ and I said, ‘What do you mean, Don?’ and he said, ‘When I lived down at that shelter with those guys, I had a home. Now I have four walls and a ceiling and I’m homeless.’ ”