More than 60,000 homeless people sleep in New York City shelters each night, according to a May report by the Coalition for the Homeless. One nonprofit, Back on My Feet, is helping them gain employment and permanent housing by empowering them through running — and the group’s 5,500 national alumni are proof that it works. Here, formerly homeless Manhattan resident George Looney, 49, shares his story with The Post’s MOLLY SHEA.
When I moved into my new apartment on the Lower East Side in May, I sat on my unopened boxes for a few hours and just let everything sink in. I hadn’t been anywhere so quiet in two years, and it was a lot to take in — even now, I’m still reflecting on where I am and how I got here.
It’s hard to believe that just two years ago, I was checking myself into a rehab center for homeless veterans.
Things started to go downhill five years ago, when my relationship with my daughter and her mother fell apart. We broke up, and I moved out of our home on Long Island to an apartment in Astoria, Queens. I’d struggled with binge-drinking all my life, and now the one thing keeping me from the bottle — my daughter — was gone. I drank to fill the absence, and then I started going into my office — where I worked as the operations manager for a major tour-bus company — hung over. I then would go in a little drunk. The company I worked for offered to send me to treatment, but I told them I could handle it. And I did, for three years.
Then, one night in late 2014, my life blew up in front of me. I drank on the job and lashed out at my co-workers, practically forcing my boss to fire me. I knew it was coming the second my HR manager called me into his office. “Just tell me,” I told him. “Just do it.”
The company gave me a few months’ worth of severance, but instead of finding another job, I spent five months drinking it away on a bench in Manhattan’s Collect Pond Park. I was in a dark place, and when I’m down, I can’t get myself back up. I isolated myself in that park — nobody knew me, I didn’t know them. I spent everything I had on alcohol and knew I wouldn’t have enough money to renew my lease that winter.
a group cheer after their workouts.Stefano Giovannini
When I had nowhere else to turn, I checked myself into an in-patient rehab program and spent a month there, then six months in a VA halfway house. But on the day I checked out, even though I’d been sober for seven months, all I could think about was how much I wanted to drink. I had some money, so I was thinking how easily I could go on a binge — for a week, for a year — and then I thought, “I’m just tired of this.” I just felt like I needed to make a total change. All I knew was that I couldn’t go back to drinking. I couldn’t drag myself back down like that. So I walked across the street and checked into the Bowery Mission homeless shelter.
At orientation, they told me about an organization called Back on My Feet. If you join and go on runs three mornings each week, you get free shoes and help finding a job and housing, plus help paying off old debts. Some runners join to pay for child support or police tickets, but I didn’t want the money — I just wanted to get back in shape.
It was grueling, I won’t lie. In the very beginning, right after I started running, I couldn’t even get out of bed because my ankles hurt so much. I was a paratrooper for 12 years, so I wasn’t sure if my ankles could take it. I remember during the first two months I struggled to walk from the bed at the shelter to the bathroom. But after a while, my bone density built up, and I kept running. I would run 4 miles three days a week with the group, eventually working my way up to five or six days. I would go to burn off my nervous energy — it was like another addiction.
But there’s a point where you have to pull back. I hit a wall during a 10K when I’d been running for six months — the first 10K I’d ever done. We were going up Harlem Hill in Central Park, and it destroyed me, physically. It just humbled me — I was so upset, I was going to quit running. And I took two or three days to think outside of the moment and realize that I needed to stay the course. I thought, “If I’m slacking on running, what else am I going to be slacking on?” I’m still not far enough on my journey to be sure enough of myself.
So I kept to it. And since I’ve been running, I’ve started to put my life together again. Running forces you to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. So all those demons I couldn’t get past before, I can handle now. I don’t have to white-knuckle my way through things like I did before.
Back on My Feet helped me with job applications, and now I work for a property management company, doing finishing work on renovations. I moved out of the Bowery Mission in May, around the time that I started the job and 10 months after I first checked in to the shelter. I could have stayed for a year, but I needed to keep moving forward. A friend helped me find an apartment I could afford, and I went for it. I graduated from the Back on My Feet program when I moved out, but I vowed to keep running as an alumni member.
Those first few weeks, I ran to keep myself busy and keep from slipping back into old routines. But I like mentoring the new runners — it’s encouraging to see their transformation and feel like you’re part of their progress. Plus, I knew that the more support I had, especially in the beginning when I’m just starting to live on my own, the better I was going to be. The first thing I learned in the military is that doing things solo is dangerous. It’ll make you feel alone, and then it’s an avalanche of hopelessness and isolation. Nothing good can come of it.
Running forces you to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. So all those demons I couldn’t get past before, I can handle now.
- George Looney
Still, once you leave the program and move into your own place, that’s when the real work comes into play. I’m working to reconnect with my 18-year-old daughter — that’s my primary goal, to go and reconnect and be in a place where I can afford to hear what she has to say, and be OK with it, and not go off the deep end — I know I hurt her. Running, and being part of the group, helps with that.
Now, the group I run with meets at the same park where I used to drink. I think that’s actually a good thing, because I have to remember those times. I see a lot of the guys who come to sleep there. Sometimes I walk by and pray for them a little bit, because I know the despair and hopelessness they’re feeling. I have empathy for them, because that could be me next month if I’m not careful. But running helps me stay on the right path — it reminds me that it’s more about where I’m going than where I’ve been.
About Back My Feet: Founded in 2007, the nonprofit believes that by committing to running, the homeless can build the self-esteem and strength it takes to educate themselves, land a job and find housing. So far, more than 6,000 people have run 500,000 miles and gained 4,000 jobs and homes. More info at BackOnMyFeet.org.