“The cops are putting their hands on people,” Brittany said. “They’re really pressuring the homeless, ticketing and arresting people with too many tickets. Then you have a criminal record. They’re making it a crime to be homeless.”

However she thinks this pressure from the cops might actually push people like her to get into a program, because it’s so hard to find a safe, comfortable place to sleep on the street without being ticketed or arrested. Then she might be able to reunite with her two-year-old son, now living with her mother. “My mother doesn’t enable me,” she said. “It’s all me. My mom isn’t happy with the way I’m living. She encourages me to get into rehab.”

“We all have our faults,” she went on, tucking her mousy brown hair into a bun, “and as parents we’re not perfect. My mom knows that. She wasn’t perfect. But we have to keep trying and put our children first.”

Brittany, 29, earned a degree in Early Childhood Education at University of Oregon. Born in Chula Vista, she moved to Hood River, Oregon to live with her father when she was in the ninth grade to escape abuse by her step-father. She worked at restaurants in Portland, then on Catalina Island where she was making good money, but got island fever, so moved back to San Diego.

It was then she reconnected with a high school sweetheart, Randy. And he was a habitual drug user. While Brittany had a history of drinking, maybe a bit too much at times, she hadn’t been involved in hard drugs. But in order to share Randy’s world, she started using meth, then heroin.
They were in and out of rehab. She got clean and stayed that way through her pregnancy with their son. Unfortunately, drugs are easy to obtain on the streets.

“I could trade socks and boxer shorts for drugs. It’s like Disneyland down here,” she said.

She battles with the strong maternal instincts to be a family with Randy and their son. “This is no life for anyone with kids,” she said. When she calls him he tells her “Mommy I want you!” It breaks her heart and she knows it’s wrong to divert from that responsibility for a temporary high. “What do I tell him? ‘Mommy’s busy getting high? Mommy’s busy getting stuff to sell so she can get high?’ It’s wrong I know…. This is coming to an end soon,” she said while walking to a Dollar Store to buy Honeybuns for breakfast. She was starting to feel the sweat creep up on her skin, the withdrawals. “We really crave sugar,” Brittany said, referring to heroin addiction.

She said she’s seen a difference in how people see the homeless. In fact she remembers avoiding making eye contact with the homeless when she was gainfully employed. “That’s how I see people not looking at me now that I’m homeless,” she said.

Having a $200 EBT card for food might sound like a lot. But Brittany points out that not having a refrigerator means the homeless can’t buy fresh food unless they’re going to drink a whole quart of milk right away or eat fresh vegetables unwashed and raw. Sometimes a 7-11 will charge its customers to use the microwave, she said. “$1 for a cup of hot water! Ridiculous,” she said.

Being relatively new to the streets, she’s scared to sleep out on the streets alone; another reason she’s tied at the hip to her boyfriend. She calls the veteran street homeless “vultures” who think they’re money can buy anything or anyone. She also tries to conceal her habit by using the veins in her neck now instead of her arms when shooting up, so she's not so easy to tag as an addict.

Brittany is proud of her own education and Randy’s skills at welding, woodworking and tile work. She said he’d done a lot of the tile working at the new Horton Plaza amphitheater. She pulled wrinkled snapshots of her family and herself at a young age from her purse. It was all she salvaged from a dumpster after someone stole her backpack and tossed what they didn't want. She knows that when they do get completely clean, move inside and start working, that they will be successful contributing members of society. She also knows that it will take a willingness, and open-mindedness on their part, to take that step. And, she said, it will mean Randy taking the lead. “My only addiction stronger than drugs is to him,” she admitted, while keeping an eye out for cops so Randy could sleep a little longer. “All my recovery is tied to his recovery.”