EVERY SUCCESS STORY IS A GREAT STORY
Carol Hall
  Five years ago, Carol Hall was under a bridge, thinking to herself, “So this is where I’m going to live.”
Carol had spent her childhood on the Wintune Indian Reservation, one of 13 children. “I didn’t know there was a difference between white kids, red kids, and black kids until much later,” Carol recalls. Her family had problems: Violence. Alcoholism. By the time Carol turned 17, both her parents were dead.
Carol went into foster care.
Carol was an artist, and when she graduated from high school, she received a college scholarship from the Business Women and Professional Women’s League to study art. The courts still determined what was best for Carol as a ward of the state, however, and for reasons she still does not understand discouraged her from accepting the scholarship.
By 20, Carol was pregnant with her first of four children.
In her early 20s, Carol began using drugs and alcohol to ease the pain of her loss, grief, and  confusion. By 30, she was addicted to speed. She married, but the marriage became violent: “He tried to kill me several times. After trying to leave him six times, the seventh time I finally left for good.”
Her husband took their 2 youngest kids and, in Carol’s words, “hid them.” She would see them only twice in the next 13 years. Although the two older children were still with her, the loss of her two babies was unbearable. “I had to live as if they had died,” Carol says, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.
“I drank a lot during that time,” she adds.
When Carol became homeless for the first time in 1977, her children were taken into custody by the state. They were beaten and molested while in foster care. One year passed before Carol regained custody of the kids, who were scarred by the experience.
Twenty-two years later, Carol Hall found herself under the bridge, thinking that was where she would live.
While living on the streets, Carol encountered outreach workers from JOIN, a program that helps individuals who are homeless move off the streets into permanent housing. She was referred to the Central City Treatment Program where she received assistance with housing, health care, mental health services, and detoxification. “I got new teeth,” Carol says, “and I was gaining both self-respect and respect from others.”
Carol Hall has been sober since 2000. She goes regularly to AA and NA meetings. She is on the Health Services Advisory Board of Central City Concern in Portland.
Carol’s sobriety is a daily struggle. Many years ago, she was infected with hepatitis C. Life is not easy, but she has reconnected with all of her children, and she now has nine grandchildren. What’s more, Carol is letting her voice be heard—however she can—on the importance of ending homelessness.
To others who are homeless, Carol says, “I’ll be your voice until you find the courage to use your own. You have the right to speak up. Let your voice be heard.”
Not long ago, Carol again let her voice be heard at a rally to end homelessness in Washington, DC. She sang with a group of nearly 200 activists, proclaiming the human rights of all Americans, regardless of where they live: “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land….”
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