Formerly homeless ‘Boy Scout’ looks to future of hopes, dreams
Doug "Boy Scout" Harding pauses on his bike ride to the Kwik Mart to light up a cigarette on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Harding, a self-described "retired hobo" is wrapping up his first year in stable housing after three decades of homelessness.
Doug "Boy Scout" Harding pulls a bike trailer filled with cans up to his second story apartment in Central Ogden on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016. Harding, a self-described "retired hobo" is wrapping up his first year in stable housing after three decades of homelessness.
Doug "Boy Scout" Harding chats with strangers who stopped by his apartment looking for a place to warm up on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016. Harding has lost old friends form what he sees as people trying to take advantage of his housing situation.
Doug Harding, left, and Steven Flattree take a smoke break while gutting out the basement of an apartment building in Central Ogden on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016. Flattree, who used to be homeless as well, hired Harding with cash and whiskey to help on a construction project.
Doug Harding and Kris Walker lean on one another in Harding's apartment on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016. Harding and Walker live in the same apartment building and met over the summer. They have been dating on and off ever since.
OGDEN — No one has ever accused Doug Harding of being typical. Or even normal, for that matter.
Born in Pocatello, Idaho, and raised 80 miles up the road in Rexburg, Harding spent two years in foster care before he and his brother “escaped” — jumping out a window, suitcase in hand — and went looking for their mother. Harding was just 12 at the time.
They were caught by police and sent to a boys ranch in Sandy.
Eventually, after four years in the U.S. Marine Corps and two failed marriages, Harding simply dropped out of society. He spent the better part of the next three decades as a hobo known as “Boy Scout,” hopping freight trains and living underneath bridges.
And then along came Emily Carter. In late 2015, Carter and another social worker happened upon Harding in a homeless camp out in West Ogden, near the train tracks. She asked him if he was ready to give up the rambling lifestyle; Harding was leery at first.
“Once you’ve been hurt for so many years, you put up a wall,” she said. “And his wall was definitely up.”
But Carter, who served as Harding’s case manager before moving on to another position at Weber Human Services, quickly gained his trust. She thinks she just caught him at the right time and place.
“I felt like he knew that he was getting old,” Carter recalls. “I knew a lot of his friends, and they had passed away just from being on the streets.”
Harding says Carter is the only reason he’s no longer homeless.
“She says, ‘How long have you been camping?’ and I said, ‘Thirty years,'” Harding recalls. “Then she said, ‘Are you ready to come in (off the streets),’ and I said, ‘Ma’am, I’m tired.’
“A month later I was in an apartment.”
BENJAMIN ZACK/Standard-Examiner
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.
It was almost one year ago that the Weber Housing Authority — working with the Cooperative Agreement to Benefit Homeless Individuals — helped get Harding into an apartment using Shelter Plus Care, a state program for the chronically homeless with disabilities. Harding’s particular disability relates to a recurring substance-abuse problem.
On Jan. 19, 2016, Harding picked up the key for his first place in almost 30 years.
Over the past year, the Standard-Examiner has followed Harding, now 58 years old, in his new life with a roof over his head.
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For his part, Harding says the last year has certainly presented its own set of challenges.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” he said. “I say pill, because it really is medicine trying to get me back into society.”
At the same time, Harding recognizes that being homeless will “turn you old quick.” And his values, principles and expectations have been altered in the last year.
“I’ve grown accustomed to things like a shower, a stove and having heat,” he said. “I don’t have to go to bed dressed like an Eskimo anymore.”
Still, as Laura Peters, his current case manager with Weber Housing Authority, points out, “You can house the homeless, but it’s hard to take the homeless out of them.”
She says it’s difficult to get them to abandon that homeless lifestyle and mindset.
And Harding has no intention of forgetting his homeless days.
“I gotta somehow keep my edge,” he says. “If you get too comfortable, you get complacent, and that’s when you get knocked in the head.”
BENJAMIN ZACK/Standard-Examiner
Doug Harding pulls Christmas decorations out of a dumpster behind DaVinci Academy in Ogden on Friday, Dec. 23, 2016. Harding collects cans to sell out of dumpsters but will also hold on to anything else that he likes or thinks might be valuable. For Christmas, his apartment had two trees, ornaments and a front porch decoration, all of which had been found in dumpsters.
How does a formerly homeless person retain that edge? By spending his days doing the same things he did back then — Dumpster diving, recycling items for cash, roaming the streets hustling for work. Harding still keeps all of his homeless gear — tent, 20-foot tarp, backpack — in the bedroom closet. Just in case.
“And I’ve still got the same Field and Stream sleeping bag with no zipper,” Harding says.
No zipper?
“A zipper will get you beat up. You’ve got to be able to get out of your bag quick with your goon stick,” he says, referring to an improvised weapon often made from an axe handle. “You don’t ever want to get caught in your bag.”
NOT A TYPICAL CASE
As it turns out, a housed Harding is just as atypical as a homeless Harding.
Andi Beadles, Weber Housing Authority executive director says most of the homeless individuals her office works with require much more supervision than Harding.
“He’s had no police incidents, no lease violations, no incidents with the landlord — and that’s not the typical homeless person we work with,” she said. “We don’t worry about him like our other participants.”
Beadles says most homeless individuals face more barriers to getting into stable housing. Not Harding.
“He seems to be self-sufficient, and needs minimal case management,” she said. “The great thing is, he follows the rules and we don’t have to babysit him. When he says he’ll do something, he does it.”
Beadles says national statistics show the typical homeless person has to be re-housed something like seven to nine times before they finally remain in permanent housing.
But with Harding, first time was the charm.
“He’s unique,” Beadles said. “Other homeless people have stuck with housing, but they’ve had other issues. We’ve had to have serious come-to-Jesus meetings with them — how you can’t do this, or have that, on the program. We’ve never had to do that with Doug.”
This isn’t to say Harding doesn’t bend the occasional rule. For example, panhandling is not allowed in the government program that pays for Harding’s housing — you can’t be standing on a street corner somewhere, holding a sign requesting spare change.
“But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still fly a sign,” said Peters. “He doesn’t stick it in people’s faces, but it’s casually attached to his bike. He will casually, in a matter-of-fact manner, solicit donations. But he never stands on a corner, so he skirts that one a little bit. It makes me smile.”
Harding admits he was making a lot more money when he didn’t have his own apartment.
Watching him adjust to post-homeless life over the past year, Peters says Harding has earned a special place in her heart.
“I appreciate his efforts and willingness to do what he has to do to be housed,” she said. “I wish more of the people we work with had that attitude. I feel like when we hand someone the gift of housing, it’s a great thing, and you don’t just throw it in a corner and don’t take care of it. But Doug appreciates that gift.”
BENJAMIN ZACK/Standard-Examiner
Steven Flattree, left, and Doug Harding dump a wheelbarrow full of dirt and building scraps into a garbage can behind an apartment in Central Ogden on Friday, Dec. 23, 2016. The two men worked together shoveling snow while they were both homeless fifteen years earlier. Flattree, who now works as a contractor, recently found Harding and will hire him occasionally to help out.
Joan Dickers recalls the first time she met “Boy Scout.” It was three or four years ago, just after Harding arrived in town, and the Ogden woman was at St. Anne’s Center to donate some used items.
“There were a whole bunch of homeless people sitting on the steps at St. Anne’s, and he was the only one who got up and asked if he could help me,” she said. “So I let him help me.”
Not only that, Dickers used to hire homeless individuals to do work around her house but stopped after a couple of bad experiences — upon meeting Harding she decided to give it one more try.
“I asked if he was looking for work, and he was, so I gave him my address and told him to show up the next day. And he did.”
Since then, Dickers has hired Harding on a number of occasions. Her daughter, who lives in Bountiful, has also used him on odd jobs.
“He’s a very hard worker,” Dickers says. “He works very fast, and does it efficiently.”
Dickers had long been pulling for Harding to get into housing.
“He’s not in the best of health; I’ve worked with him on helping him get to the doctor,” Dickers said. “I used to talk to him forever about how he’s got to get into a house.”
She says he’s been a lot more cheerful since he escaped homelessness.
“He’s called me in times of depression and loneliness, not knowing what he was going to do,” she said. “That’s a pretty lonely life. This is the first time he’s found somewhere to live where he’s stayed. I’m really happy about that.”
Beadles believes it’s Harding’s internal motivation — not wanting to be on the streets, and desiring to be successful — that’s made all the difference.
“These kinds of stories make it all worthwhile,” Beadles said. “We see so many not-good situations — we see poverty and domestic violence and violence in general — and it wears on you. But stories like Doug’s keep us going.”
What’s the next step for this formerly homeless man? Eventually, according to Beadles, he’ll transition to a housing voucher program, where Harding will begin paying his portion of the rent directly to his landlord. Beadles says he’s ready for that transition right now, but the current waiting list is about a year.
Someday, Harding would love to get out of an apartment and find a small home, complete with yard. Peters says one-bedroom houses in the right price range are difficult to find, but she’s keeping her eyes open.
“I feel like he would do very well in a place that was a little more away from people,” Peters said. “Not that he’s too close to people now, but having some space for himself and taking some ownership in maybe putting a garden together would be good for him.”
Peters believes that over the last year Harding has been given the tools he needs to succeed on his terms. She loves the idea that this formerly homeless man, who only a year ago had “zero options,” can now pretty much determine his own future.
And the image of that future, Harding says, is what’s changed the most during his past year of being housed. There’s a certain freedom from the hopelessness of homelessness. Now, Harding says, he’s started to dream again, to care again.
“I want things again,” he says. “Like a ’69 three-quarter-ton pickup truck.”
He also wants his own handyman business.
And ultimately?
“I wanna go live on an acre of land that nobody wants out in the middle of nowhere,” he says, “with two Rottweilers and a sign on the edge of my property that says, ‘Sighted in for a 30-aught-six.’ “
But on this particular winter afternoon, Harding’s short-term goals aren’t quite so grandiose. He’s pulling his bike trailer — by hand, his bicycle is currently broken down — toward downtown Ogden.
Harding is in a hurry; he’s got a lot to do. First up, dropping a load of cans and a pair of old jumper cables at the recycling place by its 4 p.m. closing time. Then, he may or may not pawn his fishing pole for a little more cash.
And finally? Head on over to the liquor store. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Harding, what with the substance-abuse lapses and an ongoing relationship drama with a woman.
“I just wanna get a buzz,” he concludes, pulling on his worn “Love Kills Slowly” jacket.
And with that, the formerly homeless Doug “Boy Scout” Harding smiles and wanders off down an icy inner-city street.
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.
