Miami Herald - April 8, 2008
Peter Bailey, pbailey@MiamiHerald.com

For the past year McNeil searched for an affordable place, somewhere roomy enough to decorate with the woven souvenirs, his painting of Les Miserables and vintage editions of the Bible. His room at the Miami Rescue Mission grew cluttered, but amid Miami-Dade's affordable housing crisis, McNeil -- like others graduating out of shelter programs -- found it harder than most to acquire housing.

Many are recovering drug addicts who pay between $250 to $300 monthly to the Mission until they transition back into society. Shelter officials have gone as far as trying to purchase vacant buildings in the county's shrinking housing market. "We're packed to capacity and there's virtually nowhere for these men to go," said Marilyn Brummitt, the Mission's community development director.

Brummitt said officials are in negotiations to buy a building in Overtown.

About 40 men currently live in the shelter's transitional housing unit, she said. That number hovers around 400 at Camillus House, said Sam Gil, the shelter's vice president of marketing.

Gil says construction is set to begin this month on a center in downtown Miami that promises to offer 45 apartments to Camillus graduates. "Our clients really can't afford the market rents," he said. "It's posing a considerable challenge."

The average rental in Miami-Dade is $909, according to 2006 Census figures. The fact that many of the county's least expensive apartments are in pockets of Overtown and Liberty City where drug dealers congregate presents a formidable obstacle for those coming out of rehab.

Of Miami-Dade's 1,600 homeless population, about 407 are chronically homeless -- for more than a year -- addicted to drugs or mentally ill, according to the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust.

PAST DEMONS

McNeil had sought desperately to find a place far away from these scarred low-rises that ushered in past demons when he last left the Mission in December 2006.

"I felt that going back to this area was setting me up to fail," he said.

That year, McNeil says he found a place at the corner of Northwest 13th Street and Third Avenue in the shadows of the I-95 bridge. Under the bustling overpass, the most hardened addicts sleep on flattened cardboard boxes. Within a week, McNeil said, he relapsed. He admits he's failed "more than 10 times" at rehab.

McNeil said he was first introduced to cocaine at a music industry after-party in a swanky Manhattan hotel penthouse about three decades ago.

"It made me feel like I was the famous entertainer," said McNeil. "My addiction took me around the world." Those days, he jet-setted with the likes of Billy Preston and Sly Stone, working as a road manager for The Five Stairsteps.

A photo by his bed side of him and the Stairsteps shows a leaner, bright eyed, baby-faced McNeil.

The fall from grace was slow, tempered to his growing addiction until he crashed into "free-basing on crack." Then in April 1991, he was diagnosed as HIV positive.

"I got tired . . . got tired of the drugs," McNeil said. "That's when you stop . . . when you're tired."

ROAD TO RECOVERY

So he began his road to recovery by moving to Miami from New York in 1998.

These days, he offers advice to the other men at the Mission where he works for $15,000 a year as an administrative assistant. He shares his story on trains, on buses to anyone who will listen.

Now, McNeil will have to quell his past demons again.

His new place is a modest one-bedroom $500 rental in a beige building on Northwest 20th Street at the corner of Northwest Second Court. "God put me on the front lines so I can be an example," McNeil said.

'MIND AT EASE'

He's positioned a sewing machine near the doorway so he can knit curtains while gazing out at the busy thoroughfare, a pastime that keeps his "mind at ease."

But his walks to work always border on temptation, McNeil said, as he winds past dealers who gather behind lampposts and pitch their product to dazed addicts.

"I used to joke around and say the baskets represent a basket case," he said. "In reality, it's just very special to see what men can weave together from nothing."

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