Hi, my name is Greg.  I’m 50 years old and last night I stayed at a friend’s house.  It’s more or less a friend of a friend--somebody I knew through my past.  

I became homeless…I was staying at Tri-Towers, public housing, and I had a friend staying with me and I received an eviction.  This was like three or four months ago and I’ve just been kind of bouncing around, you know.
I do have a mental illness. I’m a paranoid schizophrenic.  At one time I was an EMT, I owned my own construction company until my mental illness kicked in. 

I grew up with my mother and she was schizophrenic so it kind of got passed on.  So I always knew I had it, but I was always able to deal with it, but once it started kicking in, I was lost.  When I lived in Rochester I was really homeless there, sleeping in parks, digging through garbage cans.  And I come from a pretty well-educated family.  My sister, she’s a doctor in San Diego, she didn’t hear from me for like three years and she was so worried, she thought maybe I was dead.

I’ve come a long ways.  I mean, at one time I didn’t get out of bed for three years. 

My dream is to get married to my fiancé this summer and get housing.  She has mental illness too, she’s homeless too.  A lot of homeless people have mental illness.