St. Paul: One former homeless woman's story at Dorothy Day Residence

Yahoo

05-03-2025

A few years ago, you might have found Debra Gatto living in a tent in the woods near Blaine, or perhaps in the green near the Cathedral of St. Paul. She passed the time sketch-drawing bridges, with the general goal of documenting every major bridge in the capital city. Her five years of unsheltered homelessness offered her a unique vantage point, but not always a safe one.
After a month in a battered women's shelter in Plymouth, an attorney working on her case directed her toward Catholic Charities' Dorothy Day Residence in downtown St. Paul.
Gatto, who had once managed three Dollar Tree stores at a time and before that test-fired a Patriot missile during her five years in the U.S. Army, was able to secure a small efficiency apartment of her own in late 2019 a few floors above the large Dorothy Day cafeteria that serves the city's neediest residents. A housing voucher from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing covers all but about $80 of her nominal monthly rent.
Getting back on your feet while homeless, 'it's almost too scary to try to figure out on your own,' Gatto said. 'With the VA saying 'you don't have to pay rent,' that was hard for me to wrap my head around. … It's downtown St. Paul, and I'm a suburban girl. I was scared. One person told me, 'That's where people go to die.' I'm like, what?'
Gatto, who has enrolled in online data analytics courses, said she's found her footing at the Dorothy Day Residence, in part by knowing who to talk to and who to avoid.
She now has her own small kitchen, from which she's prepared a Thanksgiving meal for all the residents on her floor. That alone has been a small blessing, compared to the meals she once ate on the fly while living in tents or on friends' sofas.
'Homelessness is the most expensive thing anybody could go through,' Gatto said. 'We all get food stamps, but none of us have refrigerators. You have to buy gas station food you can eat right away. You can't put stuff away.'
Her first day in her apartment, she washed every piece of clothing she owned and soaked in the bathtub for four hours. 'It's my zen thing,' she mused, recalling how passersby once avoided her because of her disheveled appearance. 'I couldn't catch a ride across the street from someone if my hair was on fire.'
Homelessness is 'more embarrassing for females,' Gatto added. 'Nobody wants to sit behind a tree and pee. Guys, they don't care.'
At the Dorothy Day Residence, Gatto took art therapy classes when they were offered, and led some sessions of her own.
'I've learned a lot about myself,' she said. 'You have people who are here to help you, or not, because all the services are voluntary. I don't have to go to my case manager. You have to initiate that stuff.'
'A lot of drama comes with this environment,' she added, noting she's seen people who own nothing take from others who own nothing. 'I don't understand that, when homeless people steal from each other. It works for you if you want it to.'
She's hoping someday to relaunch a career and move to a small apartment in Lowertown, like a loft, somewhere near the Mississippi River, with her Mastiff dog Minnie.
Now her thoughts go toward her four adult children, each of whom have had their own successes and setbacks. Two of them strike her as stable. One son has been in and out of prison — the COVID pandemic upended his progress — but has promised to avoid further trouble. A daughter seems almost unreachable, dead-set on living life on her own terms.
'She's out there, and she's just not getting it,' Gatto said. 'We're batting about 75%. I fear for her all the time because I know what it's like out there, and I worry. She knows she doesn't have to listen to me because she's an adult.'
'Everybody in the world knows about homelessness,' Gatto said. 'But nobody really knows it until you experience it.'
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