Feature Story

By Daniel Anderson

Lagniappe staff

15 Place in downtown Mobile is one of the refuges in the south Alabama area that caters to the less fortunate among us. During my day taking pictures at 15 Place for this story, I talked with and photographed several of the homeless people that require the support of 15 Place and their ilk in order to get through what they hope is just a rough patch in their lives. Here are two of their stories:

Carna (last name not given) is the woman on the cover this issue. Although she originally hails from North Carolina, Carna has been in and out of 15 Place for the past year.

“I had a jerk for a boyfriend who was beating on me so I took off and ended up down here,” Carna said.

She is currently living in the wooded areas of Mobile, camping out in a tent every night. “Usually the cops don’t bother you as long as you are out of sight and out of mind,” she said.

“They treat you pretty good here,” she says of 15 Place. “They feed you, let you get a shower and try to get you housing and stuff.”

Although she likes the people of 15 Place she thinks most of the people in Mobile are “pretty snobby.”

Carna has been doing odd jobs across Mobile with her new boyfriend and plans to go with him to Montana to look for ranch work.

Pete Domanovic was a ship fitter who originally made around $1,500 per check until he was laid off. He has just arrived in Mobile via motorcycle that morning after having spent the night in a Waffle House in Pensacola, Fla. He plans on heading to Louisiana after he gets some money for the trip.

“This is it,” he says. “Now I’m down to one dollar and one cigarette. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“I just need to try and find work somewhere,” Domanovic says. “When you work and make minimum wage you can’t afford near anything. Thirty years ago on minimum wage you could afford a room, food, cigarettes, drink every night. Now if you make minimum wage you can get a hotel room or you can eat. You can’t do both.”

He’s been in homeless shelters across the country but Domanovic hasn’t seen one as crowded as 15 Place before.

“It’s a crossroad area [Mobile] and they don’t know what it’s like till they get here,” he says. “Then they are just lost in the system. There is not much the system can do for this many people. There are no places to go and no places that will rent to people.”

He blames President Bush and immigrant labor for his job loss.

Read more about Mobile’s homeless polulation in our cover story, p. 24.

Contact Dan Anderson at dan@lagniappemobile.com.

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