Man recalls journey from unhoused to pallet village

Jason Harrison was covered in plaster dust. He was working as a handyman on an apartment in Aurora, getting ready for rental. The place had a roof leak among other issues, and he was finishing up a re-plastering of the ceiling in one of the bedrooms among other things. 

"Took the bad sheetrock out and replaced it. And the ceiling had texture on it so I had to flatten it all out," said Harrison. 

It's a job that now helps him pay for an apartment, but for most of the past five years, he's been without a regular job and living on the streets. 

"No matter how you got there, it's hard to get out. Because it takes up a lot of your days just to survive," said Harrison of his life on the streets.

He first ended up unhoused when he arrived from the Houston area in 2018 for a visit. But he never left. 

"I've never really seen any place as beautiful as this and I just never went back to Texas," he explained. "We got about as far as Pueblo and I turned around," he remembered. "And I said, 'I'm not going back. My kids are grown. If I go back I'll never leave Texas and I hate Texas.'" 

Harrison's younger life in Texas was not smooth. There was jail time and hard lessons learned. 

In Colorado, there just wasn't enough money for housing, so he settled in the woods along a creek in Colorado Springs. He found a way to earn a few dollars here and there to buy cigarettes and other supplies. 

He kept himself clean. Not a big drinker or drug user, they weren't problems for him. But he saw a lot of it. 

"I would say that we all are here as a result of our choices. We took over the steering wheel at some point," he said. 

Last year he came up to Aurora where a friend was working. 

"Here it's a little different. There's not as much wooded area or whatnot. So it really brought, I never considered myself homeless until I got here," he shared.

After a while he set up a tent on public property across from the Salvation Army's pallet village at their warehouse near 33rd Avenue and Peoria Street. Harrison would sell drinks on the curb around town for money and did well with it. At one point, a convenience store manager offered him a job. 

That was a great change. He took well to the socialization and the hours and thrived. From time to time he would engage with the staffers from the Salvation Army, who eventually invited him in. 

It was the pallet village where things really changed. 

"I was talking to Quentin who was a case manager there quite a bit," he said. 

He would also talk with others who helped the homeless across the way. 

"Brandt OK'd me getting into the pallets and it just went from there. Without these people I might still be selling drinks in a tent," he said. 

Once Jason was in the pallet village, he underwent the required meetings with caseworkers. Before long there was another hand up offered. 

"And then he was 'like well you want to apply for housing?'" he said. 

He also started working for Million Woldemariam, a former Ethiopian refugee, who also met him on the streets where he sold water. 

Woldemariam, who has invested in apartments since arriving in the U.S. 10 years ago, needed help getting them ready for occupancy. 

"I say, 'you are white, I am Black, I came from Africa to work here. Why don't you work hard like me' I said, 'oh I don't have any job' he said, 'come and follow me,'" he recalled. 

He's now a reliable worker. 

"He's very, very strong man. And honest man," said Woldemariam.

Harrison believes the attitude of the staffers at the Salvation Army's village was key in helping people. 

He gave the strongest shout out to Callie Craig, the program manager for the Salvation Army's Safe Outdoor Spaces program. Her non-judgmental nature about people's backgrounds and errors was amazing to him. 

"Callie, it's not even a factor to her. That's what makes her so amazing," he said. "Callie should be running the entire show," he said about the pallet programs under development in Denver.

Craig points out that the wraparound services are important to follow up with people and to help them get into permanent housing like Harrison. 

"We are working on more community partners as we go. We refer people out to other organizations for things like mental and things like sobriety access resources," she said. But there are shortages. "They're ever changing right, based on funding, based on who's willing to do the work and so I think there's more room for improvement."