“Experience shows us that love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I didn’t like him,” says Lupe.

“I didn’t like her,” grins Timone.

And so begins the first of many exchanges where one will echo what the other says, changing only the pronoun. When you lack other things that comprise a marriage—common property, kids, a joint bank account—being of like mind is the best outward show of solidarity.

Lupe and Timone, who’ve been together for a year and a half, live downtown on Ash Street—literally. They’re two of downtown San Diego’s estimated 4,000 people living on the streets, and two of 1,600 or so homeless and working poor that turned out last Tuesday for the San Diego Rescue Mission’s annual Thanksgiving Dinner.

What made this year’s event significant was the lurking question of whether it’ll happen again next year when the Rescue Mission will have taken up residency to its new facility in Bankers Hill. It’s doubtful that the neighborhood there would embrace such a large gathering of social outsiders.

Timone hopes he and Lupe won’t be around to find out. The two, he says, spend a good portion of their time planning how they’re going to get off the streets—“what we’re going to do and what we’re going to have,” says Timone. He’d like to open a restaurant, and Lupe, he thinks, has a penchant for something in the hospitality industry. “We don’t stop planning,” he said. “Sometimes that feeling comes on you, you get sad, but we’re going to make it out of this.”

Standing in the Rescue Mission’s back lot where guests were treated to haircuts and donated clothes, Timone watched as his wife walked over to greet an acquaintance nearby. “She’s very gregarious,” Timone points out. “She’s hospitality all the way.”

The two met at the St. Vincent de Paul shelter in East Village, where Timone ended up when he could no longer afford the hotel he’d been living in for a month. He had moved out to San Diego from Pennsylvania after being promised part ownership in a driving school. However, somewhere between the promise and his arrival in San Diego the company went bankrupt, and Timone subsequently aggravated an old military injury working an interim job in shipping. He’s now permanently disabled and needs a cane to walk. The military, he says, has denied him his full disability entitlement and he’s been forced to seek legal recourse—an ACLU attorney is the only one who’ll take his case.

As for Lupe, Timone explained that she ended up at the St. Vincent’s shelter to escape an abusive marriage. The two didn’t hit it off right away. “I thought he was a typical guy,” Lupe recalled.

“Neither of us were looking for anyone,” Timone added. But they soon found they were different from most of their homeless counterparts—neither does drugs, and neither drinks.

While Timone’s sympathetic to why people seek those outlets (“to calm the pain,” he said) neither he nor Lupe want to be in the company of those who do. And that’s why they made the decision to leave the shelter together.

Timone has no qualms about pointing out what’s wrong with a majority of San Diego’s homeless shelters and transitional housing programs: not enough are available for down-on-their-luck people like him and Lupe but rather the down-on-their-lucks with problems that run deep: addiction, mental illness, a criminal record. He said he had tried unsuccessfully in the past to get into some sort of transitional housing program that would allow him to save up enough money to get back in the game. “I didn’t have enough of a history; didn’t have enough problems,” he said.

Timone says he’d like the city to take an active role in building more transitional housing, and he’s glad the Rescue Mission’s getting a chance to expand their facility. When asked if the move will leave East Village homeless without a resource, Timone says something that uptown residents won’t want to hear.

“People are going to follow [the Rescue Mission],” he says, adding the caveat, “People are going to go there, but they’re going to have a better outlook on life because of their surroundings.”

As Timone talks, Lupe darts back and forth to one of two tables piled with donated clothes. She tells the volunteers manning the table what she’s looking for and comes back to stand next to Timone until the volunteer motions her over by holding up what she requested—first a sweater in Timone’s size, then a towel. “I never had anyone pick out clothes for me before,” Timone says, watching Lupe give the sweater a once over.

In keeping with the Rescue Mission’s Christian lean, young volunteers from a local church wander through the crowd, organizing small prayer groups for anyone willing. Timone waves a few people into a circle, Lupe included, and they join in a short prayer. By this time a light rain has begun to fall and it’s getting dark. When the prayer concludes, Lupe hoists the plastic bag of newly acquired clothes and the two bid good evening to friends.

“Gotta go home and deal with him,” Lupe says, giving her husband a nudge.

“Gotta go home and deal with her,” Timone adds.