Mike Schlenz, who recently installed computer networks for a living, had been sleeping in his Honda Civic for three months before he went to a homeless shelter.
John Sacrosante, who earned more than US$100,000 a year as a freelance database engineer, spent his 39th birthday last week with the "brothers" he met at the church shelter where he has been living.
Both are casualties of the dotcom bust in Silicon Valley, where a surprising number of former high-tech workers are rubbing elbows with society's castaways -- the mentally ill, drug addicts and other hard-luck cases -- in homeless shelters.
"We're all equal here," Sacrosante said. "When you're used to making six figures and working in a dynamic and exciting environment and all of a sudden it goes away, you do have a nice little world of depression going on."
Nearly 30 unemployed tech workers are among the 100 men at the Montgomery Street Inn and other shelters in San Jose run by InnVision, said Robbie Reinhart, director of the nonprofit organization.
"They're not what we used to call hobos on the street. Most have college degrees," she said.
Dotcom failures sent San Francisco's unemployment rate up to 4.2 percent in May from a rock-bottom 2.6 percent a year ago -- with 18,000 people added, according to a state report.
In Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, layoffs in electronic equipment manufacturing and business services rose for the fifth straight month, contributing to a 3.2 percent unemployment rate in May.
Reinhart said most of the tech workers she sees have had their contracts canceled or been laid off from start-ups and other smaller technology companies. Other shelter residents still have jobs but don't make enough to afford the high price of living alone in the valley, she said.
Top consultants and contractors once named their salaries in the valley. Now, even those who qualify for unemployment benefits soon discover the US$40 to US$230 weekly check will not cover an apartment here, where rent averages around US$1,800 a month.
Suicide and crisis hot line operators in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties report that job-related calls nearly doubled from October to April. Many callers complained of lost jobs or feared they would soon be out of work.
Schlenz, 35, a Bay Area native with a degree in environmental chemistry, made as much as US$60,000 a year as a free-lance contractor, installing Unix networks, configuring routers and working in desktop support for small companies. Then his jobs disappeared.
"I'd been to all the job fairs. I'd followed up on all the resumes," he said. "Some of the larger companies approached me several times, but then kept leading me on for months. Departments were downsized and outsourced. Recruiters just stopped returning messages."
Schlenz still has some stock, but the value has dropped.
"I cashed in half my stocks to eat. I couldn't even afford gas anymore," he said. He gave up his apartment after running out of cash, and "car-camped" behind a bookstore. He showered at a gym where his membership was good through May.
Someone told him he could get a meal at the Montgomery Street Inn, where he now stays. He volunteers in the shelter's computer lab, teaching residents how to use computers.
The Inn has the same policy for all its residents -- stay free for a month, then pay US$45 a week, whether they have a job or not.
RSS