AUBURN — Josh Sylvester spent 18 months living in a hedgerow.
In early 2021, he set up a tent in the bushes behind the Holiday Inn. For the next year and a half he'd swipe food from dumpsters, like discarded pizzas at Little Caesars just after 8 every night. When the weather got bad, he would look for a house with a red "X" sign indicating that it was abandoned, and break in. That led to a few trespassing charges, on top of a few for petit larceny.
But Josh, 38, didn't care about any of that. Because he was on drugs.
"It was rough," he told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV on Friday. "All I was thinking about was drugs. I didn't care about anybody but myself and I would do anything to get by."
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Many people who are homeless in Auburn also have substance use disorders, Josh believes based on his experience living among them. For him, it was heroin and molly. The latter is a popular thought to be like ecstasy due to its name but far more dangerous and addictive, often because it's altered with fentanyl. It's so easy to get in the city, he said, that people come there for it.
That's why some homeless people in Auburn aren't from there, Josh believes. But most of the ones he met on the streets are — and he knows firsthand how much it will take to help them. The 80-bed homeless shelter on Grant Avenue approved by the city planning board this summer is a good start. Most important, he said, is the plan to have addiction and other support available on-site.
Josh wishes someone extended a hand to him in that hedgerow. In the absence of such support, his addiction worsened. Just as drugs made him homeless, being homeless made him use drugs.
"The drugs made me think everything was alright," he said. "Living like that, it didn't bother me."
Facing two years in the Cayuga County Jail for his most recent trespassing charge in May 2022, Josh realized something had to change. He begged to go to drug court, thanking coordinator Carol Colvin for accepting him. After nine months at rehab in Pennsylvania and four months in a halfway house, he returned to Auburn, resumed a construction job he had left and found an apartment to rent.
Josh has been sober since Nov. 4, 2022. Now, he said, he wants to help the people who are going through what he did.Â
"Everyone thinks there's no helping them, but there really is," he said. "Not all of them are bad, not all of them are thieves."Â
The best way to help people who are homeless, addicted to drugs or both is to understand where they came from, Josh said. Like many, he came from trauma — in his case, an abusive household. He first grew up in Union Springs but his parents separated when he was 3. Two years later, he was living in Auburn with his mom and stepfather. He started doing drugs in his teens and continued into his 20s.
It was after his mother passed away about five years ago that Josh's drug use turned to addiction. He was living in Melone Village with a girlfriend, working as a cook at the Bluewater Grill in Skaneateles.
Then COVID-19 happened. Having $800 a week in unemployment to spend on molly made his addiction worse, he said. He even overdosed once, and was revived by Narcan administered by his girlfriend.
"All I blew my money on was drugs," he said. "I wasn't paying rent."Â
Josh said he and his girlfriend were paid $1,200 to leave their place in Melone Village due to the eviction moratorium during the pandemic. The Auburn Housing Authority, which operates the complex, confirmed to Ë®¹ûÅÉAV that the payment was made to Josh's girlfriend after her tenancy was terminated for cause. A representative added that such payments were not a common practice at the time.Â
Next, Josh and his girlfriend moved into his stepfather's house, and then his mother's old one until they were kicked out for not paying rent. They briefly lived in a tent behind a friend's house on Seymour Street before going to the Department of Social Services and getting into the current shelter on Grant Avenue, operated by Chapel House. But they didn't like it, he said, and left after a few weeks.Â
Some friends let Josh and his girlfriend stay with them for a short time. Before long, though, he started living in the tent in the hedgerow behind the Holiday Inn.Â
"I drive by that place I stayed all the time, like, 'How did I do that?'" he said. "I can't believe I lived in that little bush for almost two years."
"Gasoline on the fire."