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There is no single path to homelessness. Lakeyia Scott endured a lifetime of addiction and violence in rural Georgia before finding sobriety and refuge in Augusta three years ago.
With the help of social services and his own efforts, Scott, 43, now works on a low-paying basis and has no disability payments and has a home. She lives in permanent support housing in Olde Town, but plans to house it in a Turn Back the Block house next year.
One person who played an important role in Scott’s transformation is Cassandra Walton, case manager for the CSRA Economic Opportunity Authority. The EOA is an Augustan non-profit organization that operates social programs throughout the region.
Scott connected with Walton through the Marion Barnes Resource Center for the Homeless on East Boundary Street. But moving from homeless to refugee was not a free trip, Walton said.
“When I met Lakeyia, I looked her straight in the face. I said, ‘I’m a case manager and I’m going to do 20% of the work,’ ”Walton said. The rest was Scott’s thing.
Walton incorporated Scott into the EOA support housing (a set of reconstructed historic remote homes) and has since been on an upward trajectory, Walton said.
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It was a long trip for the native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, who moved with her mother to Washington County, Washington, after a series of tragedies, including sexual abuse, when she was 11 years old.
Despite being a gifted student, Scott fell out with the wrong people and, at 17, was hooked on crack cocaine.
“When I turned 17, I went to jail,” Scott said, baffled by his troubled past. “I received a charge (selling drugs). I did a lot to maintain my habit, to continue. And I managed to keep selling as well ”.
Released at age 19 and feeling uncertain about his place in the world, Scott returned to his mother’s home.
“I went home to mom,” she said. “Mom talks all this mess, but she’ll give you this opportunity.”
His continued use of cocaine would make life with his mother unsustainable. Once, when Scott was in full addiction, his mother revealed the impact he was having.
“I was drugged with crack and everything (I was 100 years old) I probably wear a size 0 in pants,” he said, crying softly. “He said,‘ I want you to see what you’ve done to me ’and my mom’s skin had exploded, the nerves in her skin had exploded all over her body,” Scott said.
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Scott said he wasn’t ready to stop using it, but he knew he had to leave his mother’s house.
“I told him, ‘You have a choice,’ you can sit there and keep doing it, or get out of his face. I’d rather get out of his face, ‘” he said.
Scott found an escape at a local beverage house.
“My mother and I weren’t going to ride horses, so I got married. I married a man I met in a week, ”he said, laughing.
He became a role model for the young addict. “I always had someone to save me. Not once did I have to do anything on my own, “he said.” Please note that I am 20. I have a hundred pounds and I will use it. “
Her first husband was older than her mother and kept her supplied with cocaine, but the relationship collapsed and Scott soon faced another charge of selling drugs.
Substance abuse and mental health resources were scarce, if not non-existent, in Washington County, located about 70 miles southwest of Augusta. Scott’s next husband, a drug dealer, kept her supplied with crack but abused her non-stop.
“I let it win me for seven years,” he said. Once, “he punched me in the eyes so hard I bit my tongue in half.”
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As the years progressed, Scott said he would sleep anywhere (a grave, a porch, a couch) as he moved from house to house, taking a few more brushes with the police. Along the way, she was diagnosed with PTSD for sexual assault and was eligible for a Social Security disability check.
Later, an older merchant with whom he entered entered prison. While he was not there, a grease fire burned the abandoned house. With all his belongings and a lost vehicle, Scott said it was a turning point.
“I knew there was no one else who could try to get ahead,” he said.
Scott left Washington County for the last time and arrived at the August Salvation Army shelter on Greene Street in 2018 with $ 700 in his pocket. Ministries around the shelter kept her fed, but the shelter was full and dirty, she said.
The first morning he left the shelter, a woman with children offered him crack.
“Frightened to death” of encountering traps or bad characters, Scott recalled his mother’s advice: look for Willie Walker, his stepfather’s first cousin who had been homeless in Augusta for years. Walker was known for giving advice to the homeless, but for not helping herself, she said.
Walker became “an angel on my journey,” Scott said. “He showed me how to move, do things and talk to people. In fact, he was the one who told me to talk to Mrs. Walton about my addiction.”
The conversation was a turning point. Scott received treatment for PTSD and addiction and remains sober after three years. “I won’t be back. The taste is gone,” he said.
Walker’s death from the January cold outside of a downtown resource center would become a trigger for Agusta’s new homeless working group.
When Scott calmed down, the battle would not have ended for either her or others as the days passed, the suitcases tucked away by the railroad tracks behind the shelter, walking the streets looking for a place to live.
One of the large plants in the aging city center wanted $ 1,200 just to get the deposit, rent and other charges, he said.
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Once he entered the EOA housing, Walton would end up persuading Scott to come down from Social Security to earn more and Scott now has a job at Kimberly Clark. He will soon open land at Turn Back the Block, which is part of a neighborhood revitalization program in Harrisburg, Augusta.
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Scott’s track record of homelessness is “really a scenario at best,” Walton said.
“Lakeyia is motivated towards its own success,” he said. “We’re all in one decision to be a better person, and she made that decision and stayed with her.”
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