- [Interviewer] Gerald.
- Yes?
- [Interviewer] We're here in New York City.
You're out here homeless, tell me about it.
- Well, I wouldn't want to go into strong details,
but my homelessness is based on a morality,
a sense of rightness and wrongness
with the want to do right.
And I had to give up mine
in order to consistently stay with what's right.
(mumbles)
But the mean time I'm out here,
what I do is use my military experience to survive,
to keep myself clean, to keep ...
Nothing is 100% guaranteed.
There's no such thing as being out here and you are safe.
But what I can do is,
when people lecture 'round me
is bring out the honor in every man.
Try to understand that no one stealed from no one.
And if you catch someone doing it,
I immediately come forward with it.
- [Interviewer] Now we've--
we met last night. - Yes.
- [Interviewer] I usually ask people where they sleep,
but I met you here last night.
- I sleep here.
- [Interviewer] It was the church steps.
- This is the only church in New York,
probably in a whole America
that went to court that we should sleep on their steps,
to say that we can sleep on their steps.
- [Interviewer] Cause the city wanted to remove you.
- Of course, the city wants to arrest you onsite.
- So-- - This is a part of something
that Julianny done a long time ago,
the right to ...
What did he call that?
It's a real ugly word,
but it means that anybody that, who works
has the right not to look at a homeless person.
- [Interviewer] Really?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] Oh my goodness.
- So people get off at different stop,
and they see a homeless person,
they have a right not to see him.
So the police come and arrest us.
(bell rings)
But we're not responsible for this.
This could happen to anybody.
- [Interviewer] Now, we were talking last night
and even today about cleaning up,
and staying healthy and keeping yourself sharp.
How do you do that?
- I look for a safe place
that I can wash myself down, clean my clothes.
Every morning I do this.
Make sure that my hygiene is kept up to par.
Just because I'm homeless,
that don't mean I stopped caring for myself.
I care for myself more than ever.
I'll go to a Starbucks' bathroom,
and spend every last bit of 15 minutes
washing me up, washing my clothes,
making sure that I'm clean,
and this is how I live.
- [Interviewer] What would you want people to know
about surviving on the streets and homelessness?
- You have to be alert at all times.
You have to be on it.
You have to make sure that ...
That what you're doing is towards the benefit
of keeping you safe,
because it's never easy out there, never.
People are cruel.
People are insultive.
They want to hurt you.
- [Interviewer] Okay.
If you had three wishes, what would they be?
- First, my first wish were that
my family wouldn't look down on me for being homeless.
That's my first wish.
And what they think, yes it does matter to me.
But right now, I'm dealing between morality and immorality.
And I believe strongly that the morality
will overshoot the immorality.
That's what I want to happen.
My second wish is to put an end to my homeless condition,
cause nobody asked to be here.
And my third one is not to become homeless again.
- [Interviewer] Thank you very much for talking here.
- I'm a war veteran.
And I use all of my experience
of being in the fields to live out here.
You can live out here and keep yourself clean.
But that has to be the maximum issue,
that'd have to be the paramount issue
is cleaning yourself and keeping yourself clean.
That's always the issue here.