Endless Thread - Encore: Getting home

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Endless Thread co-host Amory Sivertson spent three years unraveling a cold-case murder. Her reporting eventually became the forthcoming podcast series Beyond All Repair. Every story has its beginning.... Amory's investigation starts here: Endless Thread's second-ever episode—originally released in 2018—about a man and his folder of documents. Credits: This episode was produced and co-hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Amory Sebertson. Ben Brock Johnson. Hey, what have you been up to for the last three years? Who? What you've been up to? You've been doing anything? Just renaming files? Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that. Here and there. You have a new podcast. A limited series, if you will, that you've been working on for three years.
Starting point is 00:01:09 Yeah. And oh, man, they say, I feel like I had heard people say that stories can fall in one's lap. And don't think I fully believed that until this particular one did. What's the show called? It's called Beyond All Repair. What's the, what's it about? You have 10 seconds. 10.
Starting point is 00:01:33 It's about a woman who, no, you can't count while I'm talking. It's never going to work for me. It's about a woman who was accused of murdering her mother-in-law when she was in her early 20s and six months pregnant. And she swears she didn't do it, but she gave birth to a son in jail. And she still, to this day, has never met that son because nobody believes her that she didn't do it. So she is on a quest to be believed to meet. the son she never met, and to try to get justice for her mother-in-law, whose murderer she would say is still out there.
Starting point is 00:02:11 This entire limited series that we are about to launch, and you will hear the first episode in this Endless Thread feed next week, started with the episode that we are putting in the feed today. Yes, one of the very first episodes of Endless Thread, the second, in fact. Yes. The first meaning the second. And we want you to listen to this episode because it's really the beginning of the show Beyond All Repair.
Starting point is 00:02:43 So take a listen, will you? Yeah. And by the way, if you want to hear more of Amory's limited series podcast Beyond All Repair, you can find it wherever you got this podcast. We're on the Williamsburg Bridge stuck in traffic. Going nowhere fast. Going nowhere fast. Here I am sitting in a car with my partner in podcasting crime, Emery Severson.
Starting point is 00:03:18 We just talked to Shane Correa for several hours. So many hours. So many hours. We're sort of giddy because we've just been through this emotionally intense experience of listening to the life story of this guy, Shane, and we're still trying to wrap our heads around it. We found Shane on Reddit. And like so many of the stories you find on the internet,
Starting point is 00:03:40 his story is almost unbelievable. Part of me still does not believe his story. That's how crazy it is to me. Shane's crazy story involves a grisly crime, Jehovah's Witnesses, Abuse, Escape, and a Turtle who has lived through it all. And we know Shane's story is true because he is super organized. He has this folder, and it has basically every important document that matters in his entire or life story. This was my survival pack. This letter-sized, like, a courtian-style document holder. And, like, if there's ever a fire, I'm grabbing this. What's in here now, like, my medical
Starting point is 00:04:26 immunizations, my passport, my ID, my high school working papers, legal documents, charges, and psych evaluations from the divorce, police records from both incidents with my dad, more police reports, articles from when I was working on public. Shane's folder of stuff is like the only thing in his life story that has any level of order. The rest is chaos. I was angry and pissed and sad. I only had until morning when school started for like some normalcy. I'm Ben Brock Johnson.
Starting point is 00:05:16 You are listening to Endless Thread, a show featuring stories found in the vast, of online communities called Reddit. We are finding all kinds of stories. We're going to listen to Redditors tell their stories. We're going to wade into the comments section. It's going to be great and weird and fun and hopefully enlightening. One does not simply walk into our show without saying how it is made. We are coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station,
Starting point is 00:05:41 and we're making this show with little help from our friends at Reddit. Today's episode, Getting Home. Hey, Emery Severson, producer Venless Thrift. Hey, Ben. So we didn't set out to tell Shane's life story. We were just looking at a popular and controversial post in Reddit's NYC community. It was titled, Stop Giving Money to Panhandlers Please. Right. And that post was made by this guy.
Starting point is 00:06:15 When are we starting? Is it like, no? My dad wanted to know, like, it will be live or not. This is Josh Hoffman, known on Reddit as Sarah Mello. He's a college freshman. He grew up in New York City. And that has actually shaped how he thinks about this. There was this man who was standing in the middle of sidewalk in New York, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs, I'm starving, help me. Why won't anyone help me? What the F is wrong with these people?
Starting point is 00:06:48 I went up and I gave him some money and kept walking. And even after I was leaving, I could still hear him just standing in the same place, continuing to shout that he's starving. Why don't anyone help him? And I'm beginning to think that he was, gathering money for something else instead of food. This question of whether to give money to people asking for money on the street, it's not surprising, but it's complex, right? Because even though most of us want to help, we're not sure if this is the way to do it. Yeah, and there was a lot of debate on Josh's Reddit post.
Starting point is 00:07:16 Shane weighed into that debate, and his comment stuck out to us because he was speaking from experience as someone who lived homeless in New York. But when we called up Shane to learn more about his experience living homeless, we realized there was way more to his story. So we headed to New York to talk in person. Shane lives in Washington Heights, near the very top of Manhattan Island above Harlem,
Starting point is 00:07:40 near the A-Train. The A-Train is the longest train line in New York subway system. It has some significance in Shane's life. We'll get to that. The 168th street stop is closest to where Shane lives now. Hi, Shane of Amory. So nice to meet you.
Starting point is 00:08:01 Thank you. Thank you. Chena's 29 years old, short dark hair, clean-shaven, he seems fit, his apartment is tidy, he lives with a couple of roommates and... What? What? Who is this? That's a little dude.
Starting point is 00:08:18 Little dude? Yeah. I've had him since I was 14. No. Yeah. Actually, fun fact, when I was on the subway, a couple of nights he was just in my pocket buttoned up. What? After our little dude the turtle introduction, Shane sits down to tell us his life story.
Starting point is 00:08:39 His family is from Guyana, but he was born in the Bronx, where his family lived in a brownstone near the projects. He went to Catholic school, St. Jerome. He has two older brothers and an older sister. His oldest brother, Steve, moved out when he was pretty young. Something to do with Steve running with a bad crowd. I ask Shane how old his siblings are. You know, I still don't know that. So I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, and we didn't celebrate birthdays.
Starting point is 00:09:03 Wow. I did not know that about Jehovah's Witnesses. Oh, yeah. No birthdays, no holidays. Like, you know, preach the Word of God, do memorial service. That's about it. So no birthdays. None of those kinds of benchmarks, which are like I'm really obsessed with dates in terms of my catalogings. Yeah. So, but that one I don't know. The more you talk to Shane, the more you realize his organization is level expert. Even as everything else is kind of rough. Starting with the divorce of his parents when he's about four years old.
Starting point is 00:09:33 It's a bad one, and some of the bad blood between his parents doesn't go away. And then, like, things just kind of ramped up, and all of a sudden we weren't spending nights in the house anymore. We were spending nights in hotels. And, like, my dad was upping his level of harassment against my mom. Okay. Really messed up stuff, like, her breaks would get tampered with, and just the sense of safety really deteriorated.
Starting point is 00:09:58 This seems like an objectively bad situation. But Shane's take? throughout the entire thing. You know, I'm like eight years old, and I'm just thinking, whoa, we get to spend a night in a hotel. Like, this is so cool. So you were not really conscious of that? No, I didn't know what was going on at all, which is kind of good.
Starting point is 00:10:16 It's tough to tell without birthdays, but Shane thinks he was about 10 years old when he and his mom go to live with his sister and her new husband in Washington State. They're in a new unfamiliar place, a new church, or as the Jehovah's Witnesses call it, a kingdom hall. It's a lot of change all at once. And that's where things got weird. Shane and his mom and sister have escaped the emotional and physical abuse of his dad.
Starting point is 00:10:51 But now they start to have family problems of their own. First, Shane's sister gets disfellowshiped or kicked out of the church for getting involved with a man who isn't her husband. First Corinthians 1533, do not be misled. Bad association spoils useful habits. Wow. You know your verse. Still know my verse.
Starting point is 00:11:10 Couldn't shake that part. How zealous were you as a young Jehovah's Witness? I was pretty zealous, like, kind of obnoxious about it. Like, me and my elder brother talk about it sometimes, and he was like, I say it too. I was like, God, if I knew me back then, I wouldn't want to be friends with me. Like, you know, I really... Well, we all don't want to be friends with ourselves as it, as young teenagers. That's actually really comforting.
Starting point is 00:11:36 No, but I really believed it, you know, like I believed it fully. But then, as Shane hits early adolescence, a truth starts to reveal itself. A truth that makes his life as a very observant Jehovah's Witness awkward. He starts to realize he's gay. At first, he thinks he'll fix it with God's help. He asks his mom about it. Actually, he asks her about witnessing to gay people. This is probably the most recognizable part of the religion,
Starting point is 00:12:03 where Jehovah's Witnesses go out, preach the church's belief system to non-believers. Shane asks his mom if she witnesses to gay people. She says she can't stomach it. Witnessing was a huge part of my life. Like going out door to door, that was our Saturday activities and Sunday. And so to like hear that she couldn't even talk to a gay person, scared me. As this and some of the other stress on the family come to a head, one day Shane has a kind of breakdown.
Starting point is 00:12:35 He starts babbling. Someone calls an ambulance. One of the EMTs was like, hey man, hey man, be a man. or like man up or something. And the moment he said that, I just started freaking out. And they, like, had to take me to the hospital. Shane gets discharged pretty quickly. Not much commas of that visit.
Starting point is 00:12:53 But eventually, he does something really unfortunate. One night, my mom was home. She was scrapbooking in the living room. And I saw her, and I really wanted to tell her something. I didn't know what, but something. Yeah. But I didn't know. what to say. So, you know, I took a bunch of her pills from the bathroom and I went into my room
Starting point is 00:13:16 and just started popping them. And then I don't know what went through my mind, but I just got really scared. And so I went into the living room very calmly. I was like, Mom, I just took a bunch of pills. And because Shane tells his mom what he's done, they get to the hospital in time. And shortly after this adolescent brush with death, Shane learns something that gives him hope. There are other gay people in the world. Thank God for AOL in those free CDs, because like my mom was not going to pay for the internet. So like, you know, she paid for phone. She would not pay for internet, but AOL kept me online. Why do you say thank God for that? Because if it were, not for access to an outside opinion, I would probably be repressed Jehovah's Witness somewhere
Starting point is 00:14:18 or dead. Wow. Yeah. You know, first it was like realizing that there were other people like me, that there were even other gay Jehovah's Witnesses, like, was flooring, you know? Just to say this out loud, we're having a really serious conversation, and I respect that, but also there is nothing more redidory than to say the internet. internet saved me.
Starting point is 00:14:45 Yeah, I guess so. But it's true. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. I mean, the first thing that I remember seeing that was totally not Trobe's Witness sanctioned was Little Kim's How Many Licks music video. A lot of faces seen a lot of faces. Oh, hell, I even fuck with different races. A white dude.
Starting point is 00:15:06 And I was like, oh my God. The world is really different. And so, you know, at some point. Great video. I know all the words. We'll not sing them, but I know them. What chain finds online brings him to this decision. It's time for some radical honesty.
Starting point is 00:15:30 I remember the night that I came out to my mom. She was in her room, and I, like, roll in the chair from my room and, like, put it in the doorway. And I'm like, so, Mom, I have something that I want to tell you. And I'm, like, trying to couch it as much as possible. Yeah. And I tell her I'm attracted to men. Not that I'm gay, not anything like that. You know, I was actually hoping that she would, like, take me to the elders and, like, fix me.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Like, I couldn't do it myself. And she looked at me, and she said, why isn't my children become my worst fears? After she says this, Shane's mom goes to sleep, conversation over. And not just over that night. Like, conversation over. She no longer asked me about going to the Kingdom Hall. She no longer asked me about school. She didn't really talk to me.
Starting point is 00:16:26 And again, she's really, like, I just want to reaffirm. Yeah. She is really trying her best. She is really trying, but, like, everyone's got a line, you know? She couldn't handle it. And by the way, that really messed up thing Shane's mom says when he comes out to her that night about all of her children becoming her worst fears,
Starting point is 00:16:47 it's referencing this whole other part of Shane's family story that is nuts. While all of this stuff in his life is going on, while Shane is grappling with his sexuality, what it means when it comes to this intense, religious life he's leading, there's this other thing that happens. Shane's sister gets arrested for murdering her mother-in-law, bludgeoning her to death with fireplace tongs.
Starting point is 00:17:13 And this murder is just like a sidebar to Shane's story about living homeless in New York City. Right now, though? Could I have a cigarette on the fire escape? Do you want a smoke break? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally, totally. Shane needs a smoke break.
Starting point is 00:17:26 Do you guys want to join me? Yeah. Sure, yeah. Let me grab a jacket. Do you guys need layers or anything? We will get to that story after the break. So Shane Correa has taken us out onto his fire escape in Washington Heights, New York. And he goes through the story of his sister getting charged with the murder of her mother-in-law.
Starting point is 00:17:59 It's a long, weird, confusing story, and it's noisy on the fire escape. So I'll summarize. Around the same time, Shane is really. realizing he's gay and living in Washington State with his mom near to his estranged sister Sophia, Sophia and Shane's older brother, Sean, get picked up by the cops, because Sophia's mother-in-law has been killed. So, like, I've talked to my sister, and everyone's got a different story, and this is where I just kind of surrender to the justice system. Okay. So, let's go to the justice system. A description of Sophia's case sort of written from the
Starting point is 00:18:29 perspective of Sean, Shane's brother, says this. Sophia and Sean go to her mother-in-in-law's house with a plan to steal $10,000 that is supposedly hidden in the house. When they get there and start looking around, they hear a garage door open, and they realize the mother-in-law is actually home. Sophia tells Sean to stay put. She goes down to the garage. And then Sean hears a scream.
Starting point is 00:18:57 So he runs down to the garage, and he sees someone standing over the mother-in-law's dead body holding fireplace tongs. The person holding the house, the tongs has a stocking over their face. The person lifts the stocking. It's his sister. Sophia gets convicted of the murder.
Starting point is 00:19:24 Sean is charged with assisting in the crime. But in exchange for testifying against Sophia, he gets just one year in prison. And then Sophia's conviction gets overturned, something about a jury member in the original trial being improperly dismissed. So the case heads back to court. But this time, Shane's brother, Sean, refuses to testify. saying he now thinks someone else committed the crime, not Sophia. Sophia gets exonerated.
Starting point is 00:19:52 So the question for Shane, do you think she did it? I don't know. I used to. I don't see her as the way that I read about her in all these articles. Frankly, Sean, not the most dependable character. he would do anything to save his own skin. So I definitely don't trust his testimony at all. Okay.
Starting point is 00:20:22 And his testimony is the only testimony that says she did it. That's right. And again, this murder happens right around the same time Shane is realizing he's gay. He's dealing with his mom, his church. Oh, yeah. In school. I remember, like, going into the lunchroom and, like, this group of kids, like, led by this one that I just really didn't like, is, like, coming toward me.
Starting point is 00:20:45 and the kid that I don't like, is like, so is it true that your sister killed someone? And I didn't have a response. I just grabbed my shit. And I, like, went to the library. And honestly, after that, I just kind of stopped going to school. I'd always been a really good student up to that point. And then I just kind of shut down. It sounds like you were going through some stuff, even though you didn't necessarily realize it at the time.
Starting point is 00:21:10 I think that's a fairly consistent theme. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine being 13 years old. Your mom's not talking to you. You're getting bullied at school. And to top it all off, your sister has been convicted of murder. What do you do with all that?
Starting point is 00:21:29 Shane does the only thing he thinks he can do. He reaches out to the guy whose abuse sent him across the country in the first place. His dad. And he's like, you know, you should just come to New York. You have a place to live. He's like, all right. And this is a guy that you don't really know since you were four years old. No, not at all.
Starting point is 00:21:47 He's your only option in some ways. Yeah, absolutely. The only things that I knew about my dad was, like, really bad stuff. Like, my entire adolescence was spent ensuring that there would be no, like... Contact. Yeah. And so I... My mom doesn't even take me to the airport.
Starting point is 00:22:04 By the way, this is around when Shane gets little dude his turtle, which is an interesting idea, because he's had all these bad experiences with family that have taught him to fend for himself. But he wants someone or something to take care of. the way people aren't really taking care of him. And he's not just taking care of little dude. He's also starting to be responsible for his own life. In this way that you wouldn't expect. For instance, after a few months at his dad's, he's like, wait, I should probably be going
Starting point is 00:22:32 to school. I enroll in school, and it was kind of like I got to reinvent myself. Like, I didn't have the censor of being a Jehovah's Witness anymore. And I also didn't have... to like hate myself like you know the Jehovah's Witnesses were out of my life now and my dad I did not have any sympathy for so for him like I really didn't I know I still mean this I didn't really have much concern for his feelings yeah so you know I told him that I was gay and at first he was super cool with it he was like you know we will get through this together
Starting point is 00:23:11 right but I was like no no I'm like pretty I'm okay with this now I'm gay I'm Pretty gay, dad. Pretty gay. Super gay here, dad. Very quickly after that, that compassion started fading away. Why? I think he started realizing that I didn't want to change. Like, suddenly, one of the first transitions was, like, I stopped being Shane.
Starting point is 00:23:35 I was cock sucker or faggot or, like, that was my name. Like, from 13 to 18. This environment leads to some big fights between Shane and his dad. A few times the cops get called. Things generally escalate. Eventually, Shane's 18th birthday starts to loom. His dad is on one of his many visits to Guyana, where extended family still lives,
Starting point is 00:24:08 but Shane gets the feeling that something's about to go down. And sure enough, Shane gets the news from family members that his dad is flying back, just in time for his birthday. I go to school on my birthday, have a pretty normal day. I get home, and I'm getting ready for, like, my birthday dinner. Like, I'm going to celebrate my birthday. You know, my dad comes home and he's like, are you still gay?
Starting point is 00:24:29 And I'm like getting ready to go to dinner. It's like, yeah, dad, I'm still gay and I'm going out to dinner with my boyfriend. And so I go, my high school boyfriend at the time, you know, comes home with me. And I'm trying to open the door with my keys. They're not working. And so, like, still trying and nothing is happening. It's like midnight at this point. my step-sisters are in the room next to the door.
Starting point is 00:25:04 And so I'm like banging on the metal gate, trying to like get them to open it. And they like text me and they're like, George says we can't let you in. Locks changed. Shane is on the street as a high school senior. Shane goes to stay with his boyfriend and his boyfriend's mom. This is when he gets really organized
Starting point is 00:25:33 because Shane's boyfriend's place is a temporary solution. And so the first month, while I was like with my boyfriend was kind of just building up, it was like the worst scavenger hunt. Like, you just have to go from place to place and every place has different requirements and you don't know which one's ultimately going to give you shelter. And you, you know, I went through so many psychological evaluations and physicals and blood tests and, like, stuff. Eventually, Shane finds a homeless shelter in Brooklyn called Independence Inn. And he gets in because he's,
Starting point is 00:26:07 got this folder, specifically a folder with the immunizations you need to be considered for a bed. Remember, Shane's doing this while he's still in high school. My first night there, there's a closet. I still have a little dude with me, so I'm putting him in the closet. The bed is like made of some weird plastic that's all tore up. Underneath my pillow was a fork that had been like melded, like the two outside tongs had been like pushed down to like create like a shiv. So I was like, great, where the hell am I? Wow.
Starting point is 00:26:41 Yeah, so not fun. Shane gets a job. It's at a hair salon in Manhattan. Then one day, he and his boyfriend have a really messy breakup fight. Shane's late getting back to Independence Inn and he misses curfew. They're real strict about curfew. So I slept on the train. Went to school, went to work, still got to earn that paycheck hourly.
Starting point is 00:27:04 You know, put little dude in the teacher's thing. When I went to work, put him in the employees' lounge sink. People would feed him, which was great. There was only like two weeks left of the semester. And it was kind of just like every night trying to figure out, like, where to go, what to do. And, you know, sometimes I'd, like, feel comfortable enough to tell my friends like, hey, you know, I'm super close to where you are because I have an event there that's going on tonight. Do you mind if I crash at your place?
Starting point is 00:27:32 Shane found solace in the things that were routine. His classes, for instance. But then he graduates. High school is officially over. That was when I actually got really scared, because all of a sudden, my day had time in it that I couldn't fill. Remember when I said the A-Train had a significance in Shane's life?
Starting point is 00:27:54 Well, now, the A-Train is his bed. This is maybe his lowest point. 32 miles, stretching from the top of Manhattan through Brooklyn and out to far Rockaway Queens. This stretch gives homeless Shane the best chance for almost two hours of uninterrupted sleep before he gets kicked off at the end of the line and he has to wait to get back on and head the other way. I just slept on the train until I needed to go to the first thing that I had to do.
Starting point is 00:28:22 And that also starts interfering with work because you don't want to be the dude with a turtle in your pocket who like ruined your coat because he used to shit all over it and like going to work in a rumpled suit because, because you have no place to put it. And like that was when I actually started to feel homeless. And that's when I started telling my friends. Shane has basically been locking up his feelings because the people who he's supposed to be open with,
Starting point is 00:29:03 his mom, his dad, his siblings aren't really there for him. But instead of totally falling apart, shame becomes really organized. Let's go back to his folder. You know, actually, when I went to one of the drop-in centers and I pulled this out, one of the case managers was like, oh, you're not going to be homeless long. Like, you know, you've got this. And that was, that was nice.
Starting point is 00:29:24 Did that feel good to hear? That felt really good to hear, you know? Because there's not a guidebook for that shit. Like, yeah, so it felt nice. It might feel counterintuitive that some homeless people are extremely self-reliant because it's easy to assume that the reason someone is on the street is that they can't get it together.
Starting point is 00:29:43 But Shane had it together. And in a way, was evidence all along, how he came out to his mom, how he enrolled himself in high school when he was back in New York. The case manager was right. He wouldn't be homeless for long. Eventually, Shane's drive for independence and his hourly paycheck get him his own little room in a friend's apartment. And this is where Shane's story takes yet another amazing turn. First, he puts himself through college. Then he keeps going. He finds a way to go to law school and he gets a law degree because he wants to work in the justice system.
Starting point is 00:30:17 Because it was the court and law enforcement that brought order to the chaos of Shane's life growing up, when it came to protecting him and his mom from his dad's abuse, for instance. Today, Shane works for the Bronx District Attorney's Office, the same office that, years ago, brought domestic violence charges
Starting point is 00:30:33 against his dad. Shane is doing so well in life and work and housing that he's willing to make a really special trip with us. Oh, that's it. I mean, that's got to be 93. minimum, but that's the place I remember. Shane takes us to that homeless shelter in Brooklyn, Independence Inn.
Starting point is 00:30:51 He hasn't been back since he got kicked out. If they'll let us in, I'd like to show you my old room. Oh, what's the sign? Is this it? Yeah, this is it. This is where I was at Independence Inn, and I'm actually curious if it's still Independence Inn. Do you mind if I...
Starting point is 00:31:13 No, please do. Shane rings the bell. They used to have a security camera, though, unless that's it. He looks eager, but no one comes to the door. So he has to sit with the reality that this shelter, as solid a symbol of Shane's homeless experience as anything else, is something different now. I mean, honestly, I don't really recognize anything outside of this building.
Starting point is 00:31:37 Like, this used to be a really bad neighborhood. Like, the Jewish neighborhood ended about two blocks that way, and the walk here felt dangerous. And now it's like a beautiful tree-lined street with no. trash. It's different. In a way, it almost feels like appropriate. It feels like, uh, like this feels like you now. Does that make sense? It does, but I took such a different sense from it. Like, um, like for me, I kind of felt like sad seeing all this change. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, it was hard enough to find this place. Like, well, where do they go now, you know?
Starting point is 00:32:21 Shane's story isn't over. His ability to rely on himself and a strength of character that formed despite growing up in a broken family led him out of the woods, off the A-train and into his Washington Heights apartment, where he has now lived for six years. But Shane's not quite home yet. He's working on it. I've got some low standards about home. I mean, this is definitely home. It's safe. It's dependable. It's, it's, it's, stable. I have control over. Little dude has a lot of... Little dude. You know, his...
Starting point is 00:32:56 His living situation has upgraded as mine has. Like, we went from like a tiny little plastic tank to now he's kind of decked out. Like, you know, I've been able to do the basics of home. But what I'm starting to understand is also necessary for the concept of home is like people that you can rely on and trust. and feel with, and I'm not good with that yet. So I'm learning how to be vulnerable with other people. And I think that's when I'll really have a sense of home.
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Starting point is 00:34:53 at WBUR.org.org slash creative studio. So, Amory. Hey. Let's go back to this Reddit thread that started the whole episode, which is how we found Shane Correa from this thread. This is the kind of thing
Starting point is 00:35:11 that happens all the time when you and I are sifting. through Reddit comments, someone maybe responds with a totally different perspective than the original poster. And just like in Shane's case, you wouldn't necessarily know the depth of his experience from reading the comment itself. But do you want to read some of Shane's comment from that thread about giving money to panhandlers? Sure. So Shane talks about New York City's 311 app, which a lot of cities have this. It's like a neighborhood services app where you can report things like potholes or graffiti, but in this case, Shane writes, the 311 app allows you to report a homeless person
Starting point is 00:35:47 for a Department of Homeless Services team to go to the site the person is reported and offer services. There's research that multiple outreach efforts eventually result in services being accepted. For me, when I had to start really sleeping outside and accepting like this is where I have, that was the first time I felt scared. You know, if you're triaging the homeless population, the ones who don't really know how to even ask for help or the ones that I think need it the most. For people who actually go up to another person and ask them for money, I always state, you know, I don't carry cash because, and this might be its own form of anger, but it's kind of like it was so hard for me to ask for anything from anyone, let alone, never strangers.
Starting point is 00:36:30 You know, I know that this will not be beneficial. Like, I do not rather believe that this would be beneficial. And by the way, something Shane mentioned, and we, should also mention every homeless person's story is different. Part of Shane's feelings about what we should do also come from another thing he did when he got back on his feet. He worked for New York City's Department of Homeless Services. I remember one of the first women that I met, I was like, hey, I just want to share with you that I was homeless so I understand what it is that you're going through. And she was like, oh, so you've got two kids. And I was like, nope.
Starting point is 00:37:05 Never mind. Yeah, exactly. That's when I became a lot more competitive. passionate toward my story just being one of many. Thanks for telling us your story. Thank you. All right, folks, that was our episode, Getting Home. Who made that episode? Endless Thread issue number two. Amory, who made that one?
Starting point is 00:37:39 It was mixed in sound design by Paul Vicus. It was co-hosted and produced by us. And is there anything else that I'm forgetting? It was so long ago. If you want to hear more Beyond All Repair. Oh, gosh. Yes. If you want to hear more of Beyond All Repair, you can hear the trailer for the series right now.
Starting point is 00:38:00 It is in a separate feed called Beyond All Repair. So please subscribe, follow whatever your podcast app asks you to do. Tell your friends. Tell your friends. You can write an early review if you want. You do you. But please. Call your mother.
Starting point is 00:38:16 Call your mother. And we'll have more of Beyond All Repair. pair and endless thread coming at you next week bye

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