EVERY SUCCESS STORY IS A GREAT STORY
James Schulte
  Many of Jim Schulte’s friends and therapists gave him a hard time when he took his first disability check—which included many months of back pay for the time it took his application to be approved—and bought a 1993 Harley Davidson Sportster. They thought it was indulgent. They thought there were better ways for Jim to get on his feet.
Some years before, when Jim Schulte had found out that he had HIV and hepatitis C, he was devastated. “It threw me into a tailspin,” he says, recalling the first days after hearing his diagnoses. “I didn’t do anything.”
Not long after that, he became homeless. It was February 18, 2001—the day Dale Earnhardt died as his racecar crashed going 200 miles an hour in the last lap of the Daytona 500. Jim remembers that day well.
Jim went to a shelter for a few days, and then slept out on the beach for a couple of weeks, contemplating what to do with himself. He had already been wrestling with addiction to drugs and alcohol for many years; now he was, in his own words, “facing two deadly diseases that could kill [him].” He went to see a psychiatrist at the Homeless Assistance Center and asked for help. 
He told the doctor that he wanted treatment for his addictions.
After some difficulty finding a detox bed in town, he finally entered a 28-day detox program, followed by six months of supportive housing. Jim began attending, then chairing, 12-step meetings. He began to get medical treatment for his HIV and hepatitis C.
He moved into a transitional home for people in recovery, then into his own apartment through the Section 8/Housing Choice Voucher program. He has now lived in the same apartment for two years.
After eight months of treatment, Jim’s HIV was “undetectable,” and has stayed that way for two years. “I feel like I don’t have it,” he says now. Jim still struggles with a great deal of pain and discomfort. He has suffered the side effects of medications for HIV and hepatitis. He has one prosthetic eye from an injury long ago. He also suffers from neuropathy, which can be debilitating: “Some days I can hardly walk.”
“My goal is to keep my health and do the best I can. I do it from my heart—I just want to keep on going.” This goal and philosophy guide Jim every morning as he wakes up to face another day.
Jim is still very much engaged in fighting for justice for people who become homeless. He served on the HCH National Consumer Advisory Board. He will “feed anyone who’s hungry and give them a roof overhead for a night or two.” He describes with stark simplicity the barriers faced by homeless individuals in accessing mainstream medical care: “Homeless people are scared to go to the doctor because of how they get treated…people shun us.”
When he is asked about his motorcycle, Jim Schulte’s one good eye really lights up. Jim likes to go fast. His bike is his only way to get around, and one can imagine him on his Harley, skin weathered by the South Florida sun, silver hair slicked back, beach shirt flapping in the wind. He chuckles when he thinks about all the criticism he got for spending his disability check on that bike. “I still have the motorcycle,” he says with a smile—“And I still haven’t relapsed.”
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