Kiki goes in search of her stuff, gone from her place on a Houston sidewalk

“The Beacon’s open,” he offered, referring to a resource center for the homeless that is open mornings. “Tranquility Park’s feeding people.”

The worker, who declined to give his name because he said he was not supposed to talk with the media, explained he empathized with the people he was waking up that morning. “Before I did this, I used to be out here,” he said. “But rather than lie out here” — prohibited downtown by city ordinance between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. — “I’d ride up and down the train.”

But Aguero was less focused on where he was coming from — she wanted to make a point about what was right. She has crafted a role for herself among the people who live unsheltered downtown as an activist, someone fighting to make life on Houston’s sidewalks better. On the street, relationships and identities form quickly, both as a form of protection and a way to find meaning and sustain against life’s indignities. They can also make that community harder to leave.

“This is my light,” she later said. “This gives me meaning.”

Too much stuff

Aguero returned to her spot on the sidewalk on Feb. 9 with a cup of hot chocolate to a heart-sinking sight: All of her things were gone.

The Houston Police Department and Downtown Management District had been by to clean up and had taken her clothes, blankets, hygiene items and cardboard, which she used to insulate herself from the cold of the concrete at night. What she was most worried about, however, was a clear backpack that contained her tablet, birth certificate and social security card.

Two others also lost things in the cleanup: Linda Gibson and Brandon (who didn’t give his last name). They were willing to let it go — while Gibson had lost some of her seizure medication, she had more on her person, and Brandon dismissed the issue as “materialist.” Then Aguero took charge.

Aguero likes to talk about who she is now more than who she used to be or what led her to live outside the Beacon. She’s been on the street, off and on, for two years, leaving for brief stints to stay with cousins or friends. But she’s found she tires easily of the rules that come with inhabiting someone else’s space. And after being denied for housing once, she said, she hasn’t tried again. She’s focused on improving life on the streets instead of leaving them.

She began walking in search of someone she could speak to, the other two trailing in her wake. On her white denim jacket – a gift from a good Samaritan – she had clipped her badge from a food service company where she sometimes worked as a contractor, like an amulet to ward off unspoken assumptions of the people she’d meet along the way.

First, she found a district employee who had no answers but gave her a business card; then she walked to where she thought the district’s office was located but found instead an empty building. She called the number on the business card, but was told no one could meet her for half an hour. Finally she found another district employee who pointed her to the office, and she wrangled a meeting with a manager. He gave her two sheets of paper with directions on how to get to the warehouse and when it was open — not until the next day.

Progress

“Mama,” Aguero said to Gibson, who had mentioned she was feeling sick from back pain. “Do you want anything from the store?”

“Chicken broth.”

Aguero took out her food stamp card, and they turned into a shop on the corner of Lamar and Main. As they walked inside, the noises of the street – the cars and subway and construction – faded away. They looked at a case of neatly arranged bottles of jewel-toned beverages.

Harish Parmar, the owner of Main Food Store, helped them find the broth. “We can use a pocket knife to open that,” Aguero murmured, looking at the can, which did not have a pull tab.

Parmar, who has run the store for a decade, speaks glowingly about the transformation he thinks the police and Downtown Management District have wrought on Main Street – the crowds of people who used to loiter outside the store and sometimes spilled inside, “cussing, fighting” and “scaring” off customers have left in recent months, he said with a smile.

“For 10 years, no one cared… But now everything is good.”

The group made their purchase and headed back to their spot on a sidewalk. Aguero had called a…