Homeless ‘Boy Scout’ has good deed done to him — his own apartment
Doug "Boyscout" Harding sets down his backpack with all of his belongings and looks out the window of his future bedroom as he enters his new apartment for the first time on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Harding, a self-described "retired hobo," had gone nearly three decades without a regular home.
Doug Harding smokes a cigarette in downtown Ogden as he waits to hear about a possible apartment that he could move into on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016. After several decades of hopping freight trains and working odd jobs around the west, Boy Scout (as he is known by his friends) has spent most of the last two years in Ogden. During that time he has been camping out and living in homeless shelters. Now 57, he is in the final steps of getting his own apartment.
Doug Harding, left, and John Flores move a new mattress and box spring into Harding's apartment after signing a lease earlier in the afternoon on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Flores, a case manager with Weber Human Services, spent the day driving around with Harding to pick up a bed, sheets, food and some basic home supplies.
Doug Harding, center, shares cigarettes with fellow hobos "Fargo", left, and "Frosty" outside of the Weber Housing Authority offices in Ogden on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016. Harding planned to move into his new apartment that evening, but a problem with the inspection left him without a home until the following week.
Three days after moving in, Doug Harding, center, hangs out on the balcony in front of his apartment with his brother, David Harding, left, and "Cowboy", a homeless friend of Doug's who is now working on getting an apartment as well.
Melanie Shumway, left, from Diamond J. Management goes over the tenant rules with Doug Harding, center, after he signed an apartment lease on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016.
Doug Harding smokes a cigarette on the balcony in front of his apartment two days after moving in. Harding compares the experience of looking for an apartment to a donkey chasing a carrot on a string and finally catching it.
Doug Harding labeled his new mailbox and created a personal "do no disturb" sign with the same Sharpie he had been previously using for panhandling signs.
After moving into his new apartment, Doug Harding set up his tent and put his new mattress inside. After years of camping out, Harding said he was more comfortable sleeping in a tent.
Doug Harding chats with Emily Carter at Weber Human Services on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016. Carter is assisting Harding with his search for permanent housing. Harding calls her his mother and has his phone programed so that a picture of his actual mother pops up when Carter calls.
Doug Harding shows off a tattoo featuring the fleur-de-lis, a symbol of the Boy Scouts of America on his forearm. Harding says he earned the nickname "Boy Scout" for giving away supplies to other hobos at a track-side camp in Spokane.
Doug Harding waits for his case workers to show up at the offices of Weber Housing Authority on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016. After a month of preparing for his move, Harding hoped to move into an apartment that Friday, but the move was delayed at the last minute when the unit didn't pass inspection.
OGDEN — It’s day three of domestication for Doug Harding.
The 57-year-old has spent about half his life as a hobo who went by the name “Boy Scout,” hopping freight trains and living underneath bridges. But Thursday morning, Harding stood outside his very own front door on the second floor of the Highland Apartments, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.
“C’mon in,” Harding motioned, opening the door.
The front room is bare with exception of a tall wicker basket filled with dried flowers, leaning against the painted brick in a corner of the room — a house-warming gift.
“Some friends of mine gave it to me,” he said, proudly. “They found it in a dumpster.”
Harding keeps the majority of his other meager belongings in the bedroom.
A few t-shirts and pairs of jeans, underwear and socks sit neatly folded one corner of the room. A pile of dirty clothes sits on the floor of the closet and above it, on a shelf, rests Harding’s trusty backpack.
“That’s the first time in a long time it’s been put away up on a shelf,” he said.
Though the bag is shelved, Harding hasn’t put away all his old habits just yet.
Set up in the center of the bedroom is a large dome tent with the mattress and box springs provided by the county dragged inside.
“I can’t get camping out of my head,” Harding admits. “When I look up, and see a tent over me, it’s familiar ground.”
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HOUSING FIRST
Laura Peters is special programs case manager with the Weber Housing Authority. She’s been part the team working to get Harding off the streets.
“He’s got a home, he’s got food up the wazoo in there, and he’s just loving life,” she said. Although his new kitchen is tiny and dated, it’s filled with food from various local charitable organizations.
Peters hadn’t spoken to Harding since he moved in, but she could hardly wait for the chance.
“One of my favorite things to ask is, ‘How do you feel?'” Peters said. ” ‘What does it feel like to be able to close the door and be safe, where no one can come in unless you say so?’ Usually, it’s pretty overwhelming for them.”
Working with Weber Human Services’ CABHI team — the Cooperative Agreement to Benefit Homeless Individuals — Weber Housing Authority helped get Harding into housing using something called Shelter Plus Care, a state program for the chronically homeless with disabilities. Harding’s particular disability is related to substance abuse.
Harding says he doesn’t drink the way he used to, but he’s not on the wagon either. A shot of whiskey in his morning coffee, he said, “sure beats the hell out of an ibuprofen.”
For that and other reasons, Andi Beadles, executive director of Weber Housing Authority, said Harding was ranked among the “highly vulnerable” in the area homeless population.
“That means if he stays on the streets, doing what he’s doing, he will not live much longer,” Beadles said.
Beadles’ office uses a housing-first model when it comes to addressing homeless individuals like Harding — their first goal is to get them off the street. But a roof over a head doesn’t guarantee success.
“Time and time again when we just house people, they’re evicted within a month,” Beadles said. “There has to be help, in the form of case management, available to them.”
Harding has a one-year lease on his apartment, paid by Weber Housing Authority. Rent is $600 a month, including utilities. Beadles said the eventual goal is to transition him to a voucher program and gradually give him more responsibility for his housing.
“They can help him through his process,” she said. “To be on your own, not answering to anyone, and all of a sudden face paperwork and rules — that could be very overwhelming.”
Harding will be required to participate in his own tailor-made program — which may require things like workshops and one-on-one meetings with case workers — to help him become self-sufficient, according to Beadles.
Harding, along with representatives from Weber Housing Authority, met last Tuesday with Melanie Shumway of Diamond J Management, which runs a number of apartment buildings in Ogden, to fill out required paperwork and pick up a gold apartment key.
“It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve been in my own home,” said a grateful Harding. “It’s hard for me to believe in heroes, but I’m beginning to believe again.”
Kimball Kelsey, clinical supervisor for the CABHI team, said the housing-first model is the real value of the program.
“The argument is, you get people into housing, and then you deal with everything else,” he said. “Otherwise, they don’t have that foundation if you just say, ‘We’ll get you into housing, but first you have to get off drugs.’ Housing-first gives them a stable platform for their lives.”
BOY SCOUT
Harding was born in Pocatello, Idaho, and raised to the north in Rexburg. At age 10, he was placed in foster care but it didn’t last long.
“When I was 12, I jumped out the window with my suitcase,” he said. He and his brother hopped on a bus and went looking for their mother. They were caught by police, and eventually sent to a boys ranch in Sandy.
“I spent my first day in jail at 12,” Harding said. “I had no idea it was going to be a career.”
Harding admits he’s had more than a few run-ins with the law, his relationship with alcohol often didn’t help.
“I get drunk and expect cars to give me money,” he said. “So I end up head-butting cars.”
But really, Harding has had a lifelong struggle with government and authority. This, despite the fact, at 17, he joined the Marine Corps.
His explanation for the decision? “If you’re scared of heights, you become a roofer.”
After four years in the Corps, Harding says he “did time” in Montana with women in two failed marriages before driving off in his van… which was subsequently stolen. He’s more or less been a hobo since then — he’s even a proud member of the Freight Train Riders of America, a loose organization with an initiation ritual that involves wearing a urine-soaked bandana.
“I know where all the holes in the fences are, from here to the Mississippi,” he said.
Harding picked up his hobo nickname, “Boy Scout” from a guy everybody called Toto (he was from Kansas), because Harding had developed a reputation for helping other hobos in need.
“The guy said to me, ‘You’re an effin’ Boy Scout, aren’t you?'” Harding said.
The name stuck.
RETIREMENT
Harding has been in the Ogden homeless community for the past two-plus years and admits he’s a bit nervous about the whole apartment-dwelling thing.
“Housing to me means bringing me back into people,” he said. “And people bring drama and troubles.”
Of course, life on the road wasn’t without those things. They just came in a different brand.
Harding’s conversations are peppered by wild stories with people by the names of Food Stamp Ronnie, New York Gino and Dog Man Tony.
He starts intriguing stories with lines like, “In Portland, me and my prostitute girlfriend Jan …,” or “I always carry road flares — it beats a knife every time in a fight …”
In the window next to Harding’s front door is a hand-lettered cardboard sign, another ode to the life he’s slowly hoping to shed. It reads, “Home of a professional solicitor. So don’t even try it.”
While he’ll eventually need a more conventional source of income to pay his own way, Harding had a knack for being exactly the kind of wordsmith a hobo needs to be. All it takes to make a little money is a piece of cardboard, and a black magic marker — which hobos call a “credit card.”
“Because every time we use it we make money,” Harding said.
Among Harding’s favorite signs were “Slightly used hobo for rent,” “Bank robber needs bullets — please help,” and “Are you afraid of change? I’m not.”
At Christmas, Harding would set a cardboard sign down next to him that read: “If you are able, I need a stable.” And on his birthday, he’d hold up a sign reading “Happy Birthday to me,” displaying his ID near a corner of the sign so people could see it really was his birthday.
Harding says his record haul was one Christmas Eve at a Walmart in Kearns. He picked up $212 in less than an hour with a sign that simply read, “Help if you can and have an awesome day.”
Still, Harding suspects it’s time to come in off the road for good.
“Something is telling me this is my year,” he said. “This is my year for coming back up.”
Ten years ago another hobo asked Harding, “What are you going to do when you’re 75? Be out on the railroad track with a 40-ouncer for a friend?”
It got Harding to thinking. It took a decade, but he’s decided to act on that thought process.
“I want to retire from being a hobo,” he explained.
And then — just for an instant — the old “Boy Scout” reappears.
“I could be in Vegas in 20 hours,” he said, glancing out the door. “You just have to know which trains are going where.”
Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.
