North Providence Town Council will decide the fate of a tent encampment as early as Wednesday

Merry Christmas. When you are unhoused, sometimes being noticed is worse than being ignored.

Mark

On December 5, a representative from Stop & Shop appeared before the North Providence Town Council asking what could be done about people living in “deplorable conditions” on the property between the store and Route 146. That property is managed by RI Energy. Town Councilmember Ken Amoriggi has called for a special public safety meeting to discuss the issue.

According to Ethan Shorey at the Valley Breeze, “The council agreed to Amoriggi’s request to schedule a public safety meeting on Dec. 20. A representative from the governor’s office will be invited to detail what kind of services the state might be able to provide in response to this issue on state property.”

The meeting agenda holds open the possibility of a vote on the encampment’s fate.

I visited that encampment on October 26 and spoke to Mark, the first person to establish shelter there. Far from being an encampment filled with trash and discarded needles, I found a comfortable home with insulation, heat, and solar power, but a lot can change in a few months. During our conversation, Mark worried about the encampment growing beyond his ability to manage - but Mark is not the manager. He’s just an extraordinary person surviving through a very tough time.

I was brought to the encampment by social worker Amy Santiago. I didn’t write the interview up at the time because I didn’t want to blow up the lives of those living there with public exposure. But with the North Providence Town Council calling a special meeting four days before Christmas, it seems a good time to put this piece out.

Amy: Hello, Mark! I brought Steve with me. I told you about him yesterday. Should we just come through?

Mark: Come on in.

Amy [to me]: This is the garage. This is not the house.

Steve Ahlquist: Wow. This place goes back.

Amy: So this is Mark. Mark, this is Steve.

Mark: It's a mess.

Steve Ahlquist: No, don't worry about it.

Mark: I'm building an addition and fricking reorganizing. I got a couch. I'm trying to get that inside.

Amy: Can we come into the house?

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve Ahlquist: Thank you.

Mark: It's not as messy in the house.

Amy: I think you did a beautiful job.

Mark: We keep the low door so that strangers don't come in.

Steve Ahlquist: I get that.

Amy: Isn't this amazing?

Mark: It's all solar-powered.

Steve Ahlquist: This is all solar-powered?

Mark: Yeah. How cool is that?

Steve Ahlquist: So you're totally off the grid.

Mark: I started with little walkway lights. I found five cases of 'em at the Dollar Tree right after Christmas. They were like the snowman ones. They still have a bunch of 'em. I sodered those together and just moved my way up to bigger ones.

Steve Ahlquist: So all this light is coming from solar? That is so cool. I wish I could get off the grid...

Mark: The solar goes to 12-volt car batteries. I have a car stereo built in. It gets loud. There was a sink over here. I just took the sink out because I wanted more storage. There are food and medicine cabinets recessed into the wall and I have the solar panels hooked up so that every time you open a cabinet it's the same as a fridge light inside.

Amy: Are you comfortable telling Steve your story of how you ended up homeless?

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve Ahlquist: Do you mind if I record?

Mark: No.

Steve Ahlquist: So all this is just amazing.

Mark: This is two years in the making with an eight-month break in Dartmouth County. Which is my least favorite place. I hate that place. All my time before had been in Plymouth. I'm from the Cape.

Steve Ahlquist: So just tell me your story. Start wherever you're comfortable.

Mark: I don't know how far back you want to go.

Steve Ahlquist: Well, tell me, you've been homeless on and off for how long?

Mark: I've got six years on me in the National Guard, and then active active National Guard full time.

Steve Ahlquist: Were you overseas anywhere?

Mark: No, sir. We went down to Nogales, Arizona to help the Border Patrol hold down the border. I did that and then went through my divorce. I started drinking a lot more. Got out of the military and did my own finished carpentry business for seven years - successfully - while drinking. I ended up going septic from alcohol. I got med flighted from Falmouth Hospital to Boston Medical Center. I died twice on the helicopter ride - an 18-minute helicopter ride. I died twice.

I was in the hospital for 38 days. I was in a coma for 18 days. I had to learn to walk again. It was miserable. After I got back out, I didn't drink for two weeks. They wanted me to get on disability because of the pancreatitis. Now I have cirrhosis and stuff, but I'm stubborn. I wouldn't. So two weeks after getting out of the hospital, not being able to walk, I started working again. With work came walking by liquor stores every day. Started drinking again and I ended up coming to Rhode Island. It'll be six years this month. I went from Arbor Fuller in Attleboro to Salvation Army on Pitman St [in Providence].

I went through the Salvation Army program. I went through every program in Massachusetts trying to quit drinking. When I came to Rhode Island, I went to the Salvation Army. They kicked me out. I ended up going to MAPP on the south side and I graduated from their program. I moved into their back house. I was working full-time as a painter with the guy who ran the back house. I hit my one-year mark right as the pandemic started. After a year of meetings, meetings, meetings - all the meetings went away. The virtual meetings hadn't started yet.

I was literally at my one-year mark. June 9th is when I got my year. So everything went to shit. I moved out of MAPP, still working with the same guy full-time. I was second in command. I was the foreman. I got an apartment right across the water and I had it no problem for a year and a half. Signed a year's lease, completed it, signed another year's lease, got halfway through and my boss got sick. We were all technically subcontractors. We had our own insurance and stuff. I got my contractor's license from Rhode Island. So when he got sick, everything came to a reaching halt.

Steve Ahlquist: He was sick with Covid?

Mark: Yeah. He was older and smoked a lot. It was right at the tail end of all the Covid benefits. I paid my rent the whole time during Covid. We worked the whole time. Right at the tail end of it. I was going to be a little late on the rent. I just needed a little extra time and they wouldn't do it. I ended up losing my apartment. The girl I was dating, I ended up kicking her out before that. I tried to do it on my own. I couldn't. And I lost the apartment.

I moved out here because I could move here. This is the only woods around here. Me and my friend Tony. I'd known Tony for six days at the time, and she helped me move all my stuff out here. If you walked into my apartment, I had a brand new living room set, brand new TV, nice stuff. There was a workbench in the middle of my living room because that's what I do all the time.

I got into painting shoes. I've always had a garage or at least a shed so I could build stuff. I was a mechanic in the Army. I went to school for auto body and I got into carpentry after. I always had room to build stuff. My first time being in an apartment I was on the second floor. So I had people under me and above me. So what can I do that's quiet? I got myself a sewing machine and taught myself to sew. I started airbrushing shoes. I made a little spray booth that fit in the window and I could spray and it would vent it out so the neighbors couldn't tell. So I was up to 200 pairs of shoes. They were hanging on the wall and everybody's like, “Oh, I want to buy these.” I was like, “I can't. They're my babies.”

And when me and my ex were splitting up, I had to call the police a few times with her because going through it with my ex-wife, I knew the routine. The police would come out and they were just amazed by my work.

“Dude, this is insane. It's like a little art studio.”

I met Tony six days before I had to be out of my apartment and she helped me take everything out here in carriages. That was my first time being homeless. She taught me how to homeless. She's like, “Let's hit drive-throughs.” And I'm like, “I think they're closed.” We'd go through and there's fucking change at every drive-through. You end up with four or five bucks, which isn't shit, but it's your coffee in the morning.

Steve Ahlquist: How many people do you think are here right now?

Mark: There's a couple. There's this kid, Jones, who started right after me, and two others, so six. We are the homeless population of North Providence.

But I was the first one out here. Jones is a great kid. His parents are very religious. He's gay. They kicked him out for that. He's in his early twenties. He's a great dude. When me and Tony first moved out here, he was staying in the back of a bread truck somewhere.

Our first campsite was right over there in August. A month later, all the leaves fell and we had no privacy. So we moved deeper.

Amy: I had someone out here three years ago, but I was able to get her an apartment. So this site was known back in the day. Then it cleared out.

Mark: We stumbled upon it. It's funny because when we stumbled upon it, it was just starting to get dark and we were just looking for a place we could go with a shopping cart. I didn't have a license or a car. So we settled on this and we brought two carts to my house, loaded things up, and made probably six trips in one night. Ratchet straps, holding things down, overflowing. We come around the corner with the first load and the employees are sitting in the dark having their break. We were like, "Oh shit". So that was their first impression of us. It is like two in the morning. But yeah, Tony taught me how to, and if it wasn't her, I wouldn't have made it. She stayed out for a week or two, and then she ended up leaving.

So I was out here by myself. And then a friend that I met at MAPP, I call him my brother. His campsite got burned down. He was on the east side. Somebody burned his tent down while he wasn't there, so he came and stayed with me. Then another friend and his girlfriend had nowhere to go. So they ended up staying in my brother's tent. My brother came into the shack with me, which was half the size of this.

And while all this was happening, I ended up getting locked up for a warrant I didn't even know I had. So I ended up stuck in Dartmouth for eight months. When I came out, all my stuff was gone. There's a pile of clothes over there in the corner. That was all the stuff I owned. People just ransacked it. When you get locked up, you lose everything.

All my tools were gone. The only thing I had left was my sewing machine. Most people would be like, "Oh, that sucks," but I was so happy. That's the machine I learned with. Everything I have now, I've built. I don't steal. I know a lot of people say they don't, but I've had shit stolen and it sucks.

Mega had a facility down the road in Pawtucket where they'd sort out construction debris, metal, household stuff, and all the trash. Once I found that, it was like, “Alright, game on.” That's where all the bikes came from. So I did that and dumpsters, and donation bins to get clothes. But zero income. I don't get a check from the state. I don't get food stamps. I don't have the phone.

Steve Ahlquist: There's no chance of getting help from the government based on your military service?

Mark: I'm starting to get in touch with the Veteran’s Administration (VA) money. Like I said, I'm such a simple person. I'm probably the only homeless Republican.

Steve Ahlquist: I won't hold that against you.

Mark: I don't want to dip into the pool. My grandmother worked until she was 78 and then had to go back to work part-time when she was blind because it wasn't enough to cover rent. I don't want to be that 21-year-old that has anxiety so I can't work. I'm perfectly capable right now. I don't want to work, where my head's at. I'm not ready. I don't want to put that responsibility on other people.

Amy: But my thought is that you could seek assistance from the VA for therapy and just a benefit here and there. And job assistance from the VA. They have job coaching. They'll help you write your resume. You're amazing. That's what I'm saying.

Steve Ahlquist: I'm looking at what you're building and there is no chance that you can't get a job doing real stuff and make real money. You know what I mean?

Amy: You could be making sneakers for New Balance in Boston right now.

Mark: That would be fucking awesome.

Amy: That's what I'm thinking. I'd love to wear your stuff.

Mark: My Facebook got hacked, but Jen might come while you guys are here and if she does, she can look. I have a special page for my shoes. I airbrush them. I was born in 1985. Guns N' Roses came out in 1985. So both of us came out in 1985, I airbrushed the Guns N' Roses shoes and had Slash's guitar solo in the desert. I don't toot my own horn, but I learned to airbrush while I was doing them.

It's so peaceful out here. I love everybody out here. I'm a Christian. People are people and they live their own way. People do shit I don't agree with, I do shit people don't agree with. But- it would devastate me to lose this. They've come out here and offered me hotel vouchers and I'm like, it's cool.

Steve Ahlquist: But you'll lose everything if they evict you.

Mark: Last January we didn't have a bad winter, but it was a cold winter. We didn't get a lot of snow, but it got cold. This place is fully insulated. I have heat.

Steve Ahlquist: And you were warm enough all winter?

Mark: Oh Yeah. Jones came over. It was just me and Jones out here then. He came over banging on my door at the tail end of that day. I remember walking across the street to get water right when the cold was starting. And by the time I got back here, it was frozen. Jones said that with 15 minutes of exposure, you got frostbit. He's banging on my door. I was asleep. I wake up, I'm like, “What, Dude?” I'm pouring sweat. I had fallen asleep with my heater on for the first time. We made it through the record-breaking low temperature. It's like a sauna in here.

Steve Ahlquist: Recently though, the police have been coming around.

Mark: Yeah. There was a friend of ours, Bill. He's getting worse mentally, but he gets help. And then they release him and then he gets worse. He was wandering around Mineral Spring Avenue because he had dropped his wallet. He was looking for his wallet with a machete. It was my machete. And I'm like, Bill, why'd you take my machete? He was like, I used to be a landscaper. I'm like, what's up with finding your wallet with a machete?

Steve Ahlquist: He wasn't thinking.

Mark: I tell everybody that comes here that I don't want this place to turn into what the Walmart encampment was. The worst thing in the world is to look over a site and see orange caps everywhere. [Orange caps are the discarded parts of needles.] It drives me nuts. I don't want that. The first thing I tell people is that what looks normal in Providence looks batshit crazy in North Providence. People here will not tolerate that. You can't stand out in front of Cumby's asking for change because they'll all the cops. It's a world of difference.

Luckily, I was a resident here before I became homeless. And they saw me on my way to work every day at six in the morning in painter's clothes. So a lot of police officers got familiar with me. I try to give everybody the heads up. If you're nodding out in front of Stop and Shop, they're going to call a rescue. I tell people, “Don't touch anything. Don't steal from Stop and Shop. Don't steal in North Providence.”

When I got arrested here, cause I had a warrant, they came and I didn't even know the Bill and the machete thing had happened the night before. That's the first time the cops came and Bill was telling them, “You're not the real cops. I'm going to call the real cops.” I was in here with Sam hanging out and Jones was trying to calm the situation down. The next day, the cops came back to get names and I had a warrant. Sam had a warrant. They're like, “We want to know who's out here for your safety.” But they always run names. They have to. They can't not run names.

The day before yesterday they came out three times. Me and my friend Jen were here and Jones called her. He was like, “Dude, the Chief of Police was just here.” And we're like, “For what?” We're sitting there talking and we look out the window and we see a guy in a white shirt and a tie walk by and we're like, “What the hell?” So I jump up and walk out and say, “Hey, can I help you?” He's like, “Nope, we're good.” There was the officer in a uniform, the guy in the white shirt, and then another guy walking around with a camera taking pictures around the whole place. The guy in the white shirt was like, “So what are you doing out here?” I was like, “I've been out here for two years.” And that's all he wanted to hear. “We're good,” he says, and then they left. And then right as it started to get dark, five or six o’clock, the cops came in uniforms.

One of 'em was one of my arresting officers. He was the nice one. He was the younger one, the one who said he wasn't going to run our names. We joked. He was a Trump supporter. He asked me to help them talk to the other campers. I was hesitant. Ralph came out and I was in the middle of telling Ralph, these two are good cops. I don't know the other ones. I know these two are good. And Ralph's like, “I have a warrant.” They're like, “Whoa, whoa. Don't tell us that. We're not here for that.”

They came with Narcan and stuff. They weren't assholes.

My biggest problem is managing the trash. I manage my trash, but I can't manage five different sites.

Steve Ahlquist: And you can't tell other people what to do...

Mark: That's the thing.

Amy: You guys run this place a lot more democratically and talk more than a lot of other camps.

Me and Jones hit it off the first day. We're not a lot alike, but I like him. We can get along. He's done so much for me. I got so much love for that guy. We fight like a fucking married couple, but we spend a lot of time together.

Amy: What is your hope for this site? Do you want to be able to stay out here?

Mark: I want to stay out here, but I don't want it to become free for all. I don't want it to become Walmart. I want people with respect. My biggest thing is that I built this out here. I worked my ass off on it. The people that own this property are fucking cool with it. The cops have been out here. They're fine with it. If somebody else fucks this up for me...

Amy: My biggest fear is that one person here might do something to ruin it for everybody.

Steve Ahlquist: My instinct here is to maybe not do a story because I don't want to blow this location up and give anybody a clue as to where it is or what's happening here.

But if it escalates, if they come here and they're starting to blow you up, then I would go ahead and do a story.

Mark: The day before yesterday, when the cops came out, I'm like, “What am I?” I'm thinking, “I love the Cape. My family. My kids.” But my family's not supportive. They think addiction is just bad choices. I was lucky enough that my parents stepped up. My ex-wife was more of a mess than me at the same time. So my parents stepped up and took the kids. My oldest turns 18 this month on the 27th. I haven’t talked to my kids for a while because when I moved out here, all my shit got hacked. So it fucked with me

I don't want to go back to the Cape. I love it out here. This is where my recovery was. I love it. Rhode Island is like its own little entity. I've spent a lot of time in the woods growing up and stuff and in this little stretch of fucking woods that we have here, I've seen more wildlife. I've watched snapping turtles mate. I've watched snapping turtles hatch. I've watched deer. The deer come 20 feet up to me while I'm hammering. That's amazing. It's insane the stuff I've seen out here, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

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Rhode Island is experiencing record levels of eviction, homelessness, and food insecurity. Few elected officials seem interested in dealing with these issues in a way that exposes people to less harm.