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I also met Chuck on the afternoon of November 9, 2005, at the annual Stand Down for the Homeless in Las Vegas. He had a serious criminal record and an unstable upbringing. Listening to his story suggested how he had become homeless. However, he was rare among the homeless people I met because he seemed a likely candidate for rapidly regaining permanent housing. Chuck was smoking outside the building after the event had ended. We had talked to each other three times in the homeless corridor before I had this chance to formally interview him. He was twenty-five years old, balding, with short, dark hair and a goatee. He had a round, slightly chubby face and damaged glasses, and he complained a bit about being overweight. He told me that he had come from Colorado with two hundred dollars and that he had worked as a printer. “Yes, ran a press for eleven dollars an hour. Good job, but it was just really expensive in Boulder, where I lived, so you can’t really survive—I paid eight hundred dollars a month rent for my apartment. That’s what I made in two weeks, then all the other bills on top of it. And then they cut our benefits at work, and now insurance costs a hundred forty-five dollars , so it was time to go. Since it was just me, I could pack up and move.” “You said it’s just you?” I asked. “Just me, yeah, live by myself,” Chuck replied. “I was on parole for a while. It’s easier [for me] not to live with somebody than to have them violate your parole because your roommate’s got a beer in the fridge.” Since Chuck brought up his imprisonment, I asked him if he was comfortable telling me more about it. Recently Dislocated c h u c k : : e i g h t : : Recently Dislocated : 151 “I went to college and learned how to be a really good criminal,” he began. “I got in trouble for stealing, embezzled money. But I didn’t get in trouble for the money, I got in trouble for the fake ids and documents that I used to steal it. I went and got educated and did the wrong thing with it. So I went to prison for a while and then was paroled. I do my parole. Lesson learned on that one.” “Was it a nasty environment? Was it in Colorado?” “Colorado’s not too bad. It’s really not as bad as they say it is. I know how to handle myself well enough to get along all right with everybody. It’s not like they show on t v. Not there. Everybody’s split up, and there’s not that many people in the facility. It’s not as rough as they say. As long as you don’t do anything stupid or don’t be disrespectful to a lot of people, you’ll be all right.” I asked him about the process of being released from prison. “You go to the halfway house before you get out, before your sentence is done, if they accept you. When you go there, you gotta get a job and you got case management. If you screw up at all, you go back, but when you get out on parole you go to your parole officer. You have two weeks to find a job and a place to live or you go back. “Colorado’s got mandatory parole, which means I did all of my sentence, then I had three years mandatory parole on top of it. If I messed up [my parole], I went back for the remainder. But [as far as support services for the recently paroled are concerned] they don’t tell you where to go, what to do. You get out. When you discharge your sentence, you get a hundred bucks, which when I finished my parole and I got released, they gave me a hundred-dollar check, and they give you a bus pass wherever you’re goin.’ “Then you’re on your own, and then you just got out of prison with no id, no nothing, no birth certificate, and you got to find your own way. Most people end up back for that reason alone.” I asked more about his college education. “I went for two years, part-time the first year, and I was a full-time student the next year. I...

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