I’ll remember what he said for the rest of my life — March 27, 2016
Today we’d like to introduce you to Maik. Carmen Tomas, Midtown supportive services manager, met him four months ago. Maik came to speak with her and check out an open apartment at Clare Midtown.
A refugee from Laos, Maik is living with HIV. He struggles with hearing loss, and English is his second language. During their meeting, Maik spoke mostly through an interpreter. That is until Carmen brought him up to tour the apartment that could be his.
At that point Maik looked at Carmen and smiled. “Can I live here until I die?” he asked her in English.
“It was so sweet,” Carmen shared later. “I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.”
Maik has been on our waiting list for the past 3 years. During all that time, he’s spent his nights at a local shelter. His long wait ended last week, when he spent his first night in his new apartment.
For Maik, Clare Housing means peace. It means a permanent place to rest his head, and an end to the ceaseless anxiety that you live with daily when you have no place to call your own.
As Maik put it during his meeting with Carmen, “I can stop thinking [about it] now.”
We’re excited to have you here, Maik. We’re excited for all the other things you’ll get to think about and plan for, now that you have found your way home.
Thank you for making Maik’s journey home possible.
If you’d like to learn more about how we are able to make stories like this possible, please join us for the Journey Home program. The Journey Home is a one-hour educational program that will teach you about HIV today, and how we’re using housing to create better health.