Life on the street feels ‘scary, scary, scary’
Business is bad in downtown Orlando. The proof is in Raymond Acevedo’s right hand.
He sat on a sidewalk, holding a Styrofoam cup and jiggling it as people passed. It was Friday afternoon, and there wasn’t a whole lot of jiggling going on.
“It feels like a Sunday morning,” Acevedo said. “It’s dead.”
He dumped the cup’s contents on the North Orange Avenue sidewalk. On a good day, he used to collect as much as $40.
On this day last week, three $1 bills and 16 pennies rolled out. In all his years of living on the streets, Acevedo has never seen anything like this.
“They had Ebola. They had anthrax,” he said. “This is history. We are living history.”
History will show that downtown Orlando went into a coma during the coronavirus crisis. Businesses are shut down and the residents in high-rises are selfisolating.
People not only want to avoid COVID-19, they are worried about the sick economy. One doomsday fear is they’ll end up homeless.
As bad that is in normal times, what’s it like now?
“It’s scary, scary, scary,” Acevedo said.
His showers consist of hunching with his clothes on under a faucet behind the Orange County Courthouse. He used to clean up a parking lot every morning, and the owner would give him a few bucks. Now the lot sits empty all day and doesn’t need cleaning.
Charitable food programs have cut back or shut down. Acevedo can still get a boxed dinner, but he hates going to homeless shelters.
He fears someone will give him coronavirus, or they’ll take all his worldly possessions.
“You have to watch everybody. They steal,” Acevedo said. “But I’ve got nothing.”
He opened up his backpack to prove it.
There was a wadded-up shirt, a cigar, a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush.
The $3.16 would buy him a Big Gulp and a candy bar. What he really craved was a $10 bag of K2, an illegal synthetic weed laced with mind-altering chemicals.
“I need it so I can sleep,” Acevedo said.
That need has ruined his life. He was 15 when he first stuck a needle into his arm.
“I was feeling good,” he said. “By the time I opened my eyes, I was deep into a heroin problem.”
Acevedo is 55 now. His brown baggy shorts and red hoodie engulf his spindly frame. He said he feels OK, but when it comes to coronavirus, he looks like a walking pre-existing condition.
Homeless people are twice as likely to be hospitalized and three times more likely to die from the illness than the general population, according to a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Acevedo can’t remember the last time he didn’t sleep on a piece of cardboard. Well, there were mattresses in jail, which he’s been in and out for years.
The arrests were usually for theft. Even cheap drugs cost money.
If you were looking for reasons not to give Acevedo a dime, there are plenty of them. But if you stopped to talk with him, you’d walk away feeling a sense of loss.
He doesn’t come off as a menace to society. He’s perceptive and pleasant. It bothers him that his hair looks as if it hasn’t been combed in a week.
Nobody grows up wanting to be homeless. Then life throws them things they cannot or will not handle, and they end up with $3.16 to their name.
“I am a nobody.” Acevedo said. In one sense, COVID-19 has brought a dose of social justice. It doesn’t care if you are the Prime Minister of Britain or a homeless guy in Orlando.
Anyone can get it. Or, as Madonna said in an Instagram post, “It’s the great equalizer and what’s terrible about it is what’s great about it.”
Of course, she said it while basking in a warm milky bath sprinkled with rose petals.
As trying as these times may be, the Material Girl doesn’t have to worry where her next roll of toilet paper is coming from. Most people who live in high-rise condos can hunker down with Netflix, order DoorDash and slip a $20 bill under the door when the food arrives.
People who live on society’s bottom floor cannot.
“It’s scary, but I can’t do anything about it,” he said. “But I got this.”
His hoodie is from the SpiderMan collection, and it can be zipped over the face opening to top of the hood. Wardrobe designers at Marvel did not intend for it to be a makeshift N95 mask.
Instead of latex gloves, Acevedo has a pair of imitation wool gloves.
“This is my protection,” he laughed.
History will indeed show coronavirus was indeed a great equalizer.
But the crisis was far more terrible if you spent it on a sidewalk instead of in a nice warm bath. This is one in a series of stories about Central Floridians living with and adapting to the coronavirus crisis. If you have a story to tell, contact David Whitley at dwhitley@orlandosentinel.com.