Photo/Denver Out Loud
Editor’s note: This is an interview with Josh and Ashley, by Denver Out Loud member PJ Damico, transcribed from a video.
DENVER, CO — My name is Josh and this is my wife Ashley, “Little Bit.” We’ve been together off and on for the last 12 years. I’ve been out on the street for eight years now. We’ve stuck together through a lot.
Ashley: This is my wheelchair I use because of my hips and my back. We’re expecting twins. I’ve been out for five years. I went back home and then back out. There aren’t plenty of places for couples to stay in a shelter together at all. Even being pregnant, we’re not legally married, they won’t put us in a shelter together. Our two other kids are in Missouri. Our first one, we don’t know where she is, she got taken away from us when we first got onto the streets. She was about 5 when she got taken. We couldn’t find a shelter where women and children or even couples with kids could be together. They said it was endangering the child. I’m hoping in the near future I can get her back.
Josh: We’re awake now at 4 a.m. cause we’re waiting for the sweeps. They will bring cops, trash trucks to pick up whatever is left. We are going to take our wheelchair, tarps, all our belongings we can carry.
Ashley: All the rest we will have to leave and they’ll take it away no matter what. They said if you can’t carry it on your back we’ll take it and put it in storage, and we have no form of ID to get it. So it’s like they’re not going to give it back anyways. We hear a lot of people are going up to the Capitol, in front of the mayor’s house, right there in the park.
Josh: I would like other people who sleep out here to come with us, so we can get this straightened out, and get the urban camping ban taken care of.
Ashley: They expect us to sleep on the concrete, nothing underneath us. You can’t have anything. I’m pregnant and they expect me to be on the ground, the concrete. Out here they’ll harass you for having even cardboard underneath you, they consider that urban camping. It’s hard enough for me, with twins in here.
