Meet today’s Shero, Lucky Michael. Lucky is originally from Ethiopia, East Africa, and has lived in San Diego, California since 1987. Lucky has dedicated the past 18 years to a career in social services, committing 11 of those years to working with individuals experiencing homelessness. Her work has entailed supporting adults with developmental disabilities, case management, substance use counseling, fair housing rights advocacy, and leading programs, outreach services, and teams.
Lucky’s responsibilities have included supervision and oversight of homeless shelters, staff management, support for those who have transitioned into housing, and utilizing data-driven technology solutions to meet the needs of her clients. “I did a demographic pool in our database system and mapped out where our 65 and older clients live and delivered them food every week.” This is especially important for ensuring high-risk populations continue receiving the support they need during coronavirus.
Her drive for doing this work merges the personal with the professional: “Not neglecting the needs of the poor is one of my spiritual tenets. How the poor are treated in your community is a reflection of your community. If we just walk by people on the street and we do nothing, then that’s very telling of the state of our community.” What would the world look like if we all adopted this viewpoint? For Lucky, the answer is simple: “It’s like a Mr. Rogers song, help the people in your neighborhood.”
Lucky’s motivation for service-oriented work also stems from “the people that we serve and being able to educate them on resources they should already have access to. Ideally, we shouldn’t even have this job.” Or, put more bluntly: “I’m just here helping people navigate an inequitable system. I don’t think you get ‘atta-boys’ or pats on the back. If I could do more, like have land, resources, and space, I’d build them housing myself. But all I can do is be a voice and use that to get people what they need.”
“I’m just here helping people navigate an inequitable system. I don’t think you get ‘atta-boys’ or pats on the back. If I could do more, like have land, resources, and space, I’d build them housing myself. But all I can do is be a voice and use that to get people what they need.”
Lucky’s passion for those she serves is tangible. What she loves most about the work is the moment "when we meet someone at the clinic who is experiencing Serious Mental Illness (SMI), who has been on the streets and in the elements for many years, and who is considered ‘the most difficult to serve.’ Seeing them get the first keys to their apartment and move in and know ‘I’m gonna be safe tonight and have my own space.’” You can hear the conviction in her voice. “And sometimes they don’t even have furniture and they haven’t had a place in many, many years, but now they have one. Seeing their joy and their safety brings me joy.” She speaks with the content of someone who has truly found their life’s calling.
Even when discussing the biggest challenges of her work, Lucky’s perspective is on the impact the hardships cause for those she serves. Grounded in the addressing the bigger picture, she identifies the most significant challenge as “the lack of affordable housing in San Diego.” According to the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless’ ‘2020 We All Count RESULTS’, there are currently over 7,600 people experiencing homelessness in San Diego, while the San Diego 2019 Vacancy and Rental Rate Survey findings show the San Diego vacancy rate to be 4.1 percent as of spring 2019. “These are numbers I think about all the time, and what can we do? New developments open but oftentimes they’re not affordable and this reality is troubling and frustrating.”
During COVID-19, these challenges are exacerbated. “Most public entities, like parks and libraries, are closed. For the clients who don’t want to go into shelters because of trauma, now they don’t have a place to use the restroom or apply for unemployment. A lot of clients have expressed this frustration to us. Where can they go?”
With these compounding difficulties, supporting communities experiencing homelessness is critically important as COVID-19 ravages the US. And perhaps no one is more dedicated to providing this support than Lucky and her colleagues. She explains why they keep going in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles: “We can’t abandon the people we serve with everything going on. If we’re all at-risk then they are most at-risk and due to them being unhoused there is no social distancing.”
What does doing this work look like during coronavirus? “We have gloves, we have masks, we have sanitizer at our desks and in our cars – obviously for ourselves and our families, but also for our clients. Do I feel like we could contract? Absolutely. Are we exposed to it? Definitely. Some homeless shelter workers have contracted COVID-19. Do we do the best we can with the tools we have? Absolutely. Does this mean we will all stay safe? It’s not a guarantee.” Lucky, like so many in the social services industry, chooses the frontlines without the safety nets remote work affords.
In addition to loving what she does, necessity also dictates Lucky continuing this work during COVID-19: “Families can barely afford to live in San Diego. Folks who live in our communities who are essential workers can barely afford housing because the cost of living is out of control. And myself included. We’re a dual-income household but if one of us wasn’t working, we couldn’t afford it here with three kids.”
Lucky’s sheroism extends beyond just her work. On a daily basis, she strikes the delicate balance of increased risk of exposure to coronavirus and keeping her three kids at home safe and healthy. “It definitely makes me nervous. I have a routine: go in through the garage and wash myself and my clothes. The kids know what I do. They have volunteered with my work many times, so they know what it is and they know it’s necessary I still go in. They understand that.”
Across the globe, we've collectively struggled to deal with the mental and physical impacts of the coronavirus. Lucky highlights the challenges for those in society whose options – even to cope – are limited. “As the world does its best to carry on, there are hundreds and hundreds of people suffering. People think ‘I just have to stay at it with Instagram and Tick Tock videos’, which is great that they’re finding cute ways to cope. But in other ways it’s just so frustrating because these people have nowhere to go during this time. I do what I can to make this not as intimidating and depressing for my kids by making great food in my backyard and dancing and chatting and doing what I can as a parent to keep my kids’ spirits up. But what about families that can’t do this? There’s women with children on the streets. There’s families on the streets. What do they do? There’s no TikTok for them. They’re experiencing the same fears but there’s no tools for them. And can I just underscore this again? Lack of housing touches all of this.”
“I do what I can to make this not as intimidating and depressing for my kids by making great food in my backyard and dancing and chatting and doing what I can as a parent to keep my kids’ spirits up. But what about families that can’t do this? There’s women with children on the streets. There’s families on the streets. What do they do?”
Lucky uses the present, or as she calls it the ‘Great Pause’, to express her hopes for the future she wants to see. “I don’t even think I want the old normal. I don’t want us to get back to that. As much as we look forward to supporting small businesses, hopefully there is a paradigm shift, and hopefully the local coffee shops think ‘I can hire a dishwasher or a cook from the homeless shelter.’ Hopefully the local breweries think ‘Using my love of artisanal beers, I can make this work a little more woke and inclusive.’ Hopefully after this we can give people not even a nice, but a livable wage.” Lucky expresses how you don’t have to be a small business owner or entrepreneur to do your part: “Just get to know. If you don’t have time to give and help, you can just get to know. Hopefully you don’t see someone who is unhoused and just walk past them.”
She proposes a thought experiment: “Say San Diego was two square miles – how could you be happy if two or three out of the 10 people in our neighborhood were living on the street and eating out of trash cans? If we’re scared, then they are even more scared. Our neighbors right next to us are suffering and unless this is addressed, then I don’t think there’s a way for us to really find happiness.”
I ask Lucky if there is one moment, one story, or one journey that stands out in her 18 years in social services. “There are stories that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I am deeply moved by a woman who was a sex trade worker who needed to get her basic necessities met, and she was doing this work to get an ID card and find housing. I’m moved by the duality of it: that I can provide resources, but in every single instance knowing this situation was preventable. None of these individuals would have ever had to meet me if the system didn’t abandon them at some point in their life.” Lucky’s voice breaks and even through the phone you can hear her fighting tears. “What I’m saying is I love a feel-good story, and it feels good to know that I’m in the service of others, but it would feel better to know that my job is obsolete and not necessary.”
As she reminisces, she weaves her origin story and her present reality together: “Even though I’m from East Africa, I’m a proud San Diegan, and I will never stop doing this work. And, inshallah, we get to a place where we solve poverty from a systems level because we realize it’s unnecessary – it’s a fixable problem. If you look at how much money we’ve used just in this past year, just towards war, it’s unnecessary and it’s immoral.” She has a vision for the way patriotism is defined and implemented. “I wish more patriots were like ‘I love America so much. We’re winning and I want us to keep winning by taking care of people in our communities. In order to stay the best and be the number one in the whole world, we make sure we’re all taken care of.’”
“I wish more patriots were like ‘I love America so much. We’re winning and I want us to keep winning by taking care of people in our communities. In order to stay the best and be the number one in the whole world, we make sure we’re all taken care of.’”
What’s Lucky’s biggest driver and impetus for change? “If we fix it at a systems level we’re not at the mercy of a spiritual or devout level; we fix it because it was the right thing to do in the first place.” And there you have it.
