In the eyes of the homeless fashion police, I had just committed a serious faux-pas.

Joe Paige, a 54-year-old homeless man living in Norfolk, was quick to point this out to me shortly after we met.

“Girl, if you wanna see how we live and know what it’s like to be homeless, the first thing you’re going to learn is not to wear black,” he said while eyeing my dark shirt. “It’s too hot out here for that, you need to wear light colors. It’s less about style and more about survival when you live on the streets. Look at me, see what I’m wearing? White.”

It was a hot, sticky Sunday afternoon in July when I first met Paige. He’d been standing outside of the Sacred Heart Church on Graydon Ave., chatting with two men when I saw him. I noticed that like Paige, these men were also wearing light colored, comfortable-fitting clothes. While all three men were dressed casually, they appeared just as presentable as anyone else you might see in Ghent. Had it not been for the fact that I’d just seen them exiting the church’s soup kitchen, I would never have guessed these men were homeless.

I approached Paige and his friends and asked them if they would be willing to talk to me about what it’s like to be homeless. They were agreeable, so we walked a few blocks over and found some benches to sit on in the Stockley Gardens Park. I sat down to talk with these particular men for a number of reasons.

Ronald P.'s light colored attire.

For one, I was curious. I found them intriguing and wanted to know more about who they were, the kind of lives they led and the experiences they’d been through. I’ve always been of the belief that everyone has a story to tell, and to put it quite simply, I wanted to know theirs. I wondered what their pasts had been like, where they’d come from, and how exactly they wound up homeless and living on the streets. I wanted to understand what, if anything, was so different between these three individuals and myself. Could I possibly find myself homeless someday, or in a situation similar to theirs?

“I’ll tell you what it’s like to be homeless,” says Paige’s friend, Reggie M., a 53-year-old man from Georgia. “The damn police harass us all the time and stop us for trespassing… because we’re homeless. But look at us, we don’t look homeless. Here, “ Reggie said to me as he lifted up his arm and gestured toward his armpit, “Want to smell? We’re clean, we shower, we don’t smell.” I laughed and politely declined his offer since I’d already realized he was right. As I sat mere inches away from him on a park bench I’d become acutely aware of the fact that I was perspiring significantly more than he was, and if anyone smelled it was most likely me.

When I inquired further about their negative experiences with the police, Ronald P., a 53-year-old Norfolk native was the first to speak up. “Sometimes when I walk through the park at night the law be after me just because I’m out here walking around. And they’ll stop me and write me a ticket for that, for trespassing.”

“We don’t do nothing, or bother anybody,” Paige chimed in. “We’re not gonna rob you. We’re not the crooked ones with their pants hanging way down, you know, the ones that be selling that stuff on the corner. The law doesn’t mess with them, they mess with us.”

No more than twenty minutes after telling me their tales involving local law enforcement, I witnessed firsthand just what they’d been referring to. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car had pulled up to the curb behind where we were sitting. It wasn’t until I glanced over my shoulder that I realized it was not one, but two Norfolk police cruisers. Three officers emerged and began to approach us. The one in front then announced to no one in particular that they needed to see some sort of identification. As my three new acquaintances forked over their IDs, I asked the officers if they would like to see mine as well. Their reply was a simple “No.”

Joe Paige.

“We got a call from a concerned citizen who reported three men drinking in the park with one female,” said Officer B.C. Williams from Norfolk’s Third Patrol Division. Williams did the majority of the talking, while the two officers accompanying him faded into the background. The officer standing closest to Williams looked bored and appeared to be more concerned with eating the apple he had in his hand. The officers checked to see if there were any warrants out for the three men before returning their IDs to them. Since none had been issued and there was nothing present to indicate alcohol was being consumed, the officers eventually returned to their vehicles and left.

“That’s what we go through all day… harassment.” Reggie mumbled while looking at the ground and shaking his head. I was reeling in disbelief at what had just taken place. Had I not witnessed the whole ordeal myself, or been given tangible evidence in the form of Officer Williams business card, I’m not sure I would have believed such a strange coincidence had actually occurred. The chance encounter with Norfolk’s finest just mere moments after they’d been the topic of discussion only further supported the accounts that Joe, Reggie and Ronald had given me. It was difficult for me to doubt the authenticity of their stories considering I had literally just experienced the meaning of the expression “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

When I contacted the Norfolk Police Department’s spokesperson, Karen Parker-Chesson, she told me based on the eyewitness account I had provided she did not note harassment.

“Our officers are trained to ask questions or further investigate based on probable cause, and or complaints and concerns rendered by citizens,” she added. “Officers give no regard to a persons financial station, when answering a call for service or helping a citizen, regardless of means. Anyone who believes that the actions of an officer are inappropriate, may contact the Department’s Office of Professional Standards.”

According to the 2009 Status Report on Hunger & Homelessness published by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the city of Norfolk experienced an 18% increase in the number of homeless individuals over the past year. Norfolk officials also report that of the overall percentage of homeless adults living in the city, 15% of those are veterans. Joe Paige and Reggie M. are living proof of that.

Paige, a former Army Ranger, told me he served for ten years before being honorably discharged. Once out of the service, he took care of his blind father and held a job working for Metro Machine. Reggie had a similar story, “I was discharged from the Navy and I haven’t really been able to pick myself back up,” he explained. “I’ve had a couple of jobs, but they don’t last, so I’ve been on the streets since about 1983.”

Ronald P. is also part of a different statistical group, the 9.3% of Norfolk’s population that is unemployed. Ronald told me he had worked at Mark Gonsenhauser’s Rug and Carpet Store in Virginia Beach for over fifteen years before getting arrested and sent to jail. Upon being released after serving his time, Ronald found himself out of a job when his former position at the store was no longer available.

I believed the stories these men shared with me were genuine. I sincerely doubt they were embellished or exaggerated for sensational purposes. After all, Joe and Reggie had showed me their Department of Veterans Affairs ID cards and allowed me to not only examine them but photograph them as well. As for Ronald, he was open and upfront with me about his checkered past and made no attempt to hide the skeletons that lived in his closet. The bookkeeper at Mark Gonsenhauser’s store was able to verify Ronald’s employment history, but could only provide records dating back to 1998, when the store began using it’s current computer software program.

None of the men that I’d spoken with fit the stereotype so many of us have of the homeless. They weren’t crazy, or on drugs, or dirty. They’d just been dealt a bad hand or had suffered some unfortunate circumstances and wound up living on the streets as a result.

“Sometimes we sit here and tell jokes, or serenade pretty girls,” Paige said before belting out a few lines of an old Doo-wop song. “We just sit here and laugh. That’s all we can do.”

For information regarding Norfolk’s official policies for dealing with the homeless population, click here.