Ready, Willing & Able | The Doe Fund

After spending nine and a half years in jail for armed robbery and another four years living on the streets, begging for change and shooting heroin, John Hodge heard about a nonprofit program called Ready, Willing and Able -- which provides homeless people with housing and a paid job -- and decided to sign up. For the last 10 months, Hodge, 45, has been cleaning the same 10-block stretch on First Avenue where he used to panhandle. "It's a beautiful thing," he says. "My job is a blessing."

Hodge gets up at 4:30 each morning at the Harlem Men's Shelter, where he lives with 197 other men, and straightens up his room. Once a week, before going to work, he stops off to get tested for drugs. "I don't mind," he says. "I'm an ex-heroin addict. It gives me accountability."

When they arrive at their work assignment at 7:30, Hodge and his partner kneel beside their bins and pray for "traveling mercies," for each other and for the other men in their company. "I don't feel silly doing it because I believe in what I'm doing. I'm not a fanatic. I'm an actual person who relies on God."

While working, Hodge often passes friends from his former life -- like Teddy, who also used to sleep in a nearby park. Hodge sometimes gives Teddy a sandwich. "It's strange to see him because people you know could do better. I kind of understand because I was in the same shoes Teddy's still in."

Last August, Hodge got back in touch with his ex-wife and their five children. He told them, "I can't do nothing about the past, but I can be here the best way I know now." On a break, he calls his 25-year-old daughter. "I'm not the man that I want to be yet, but I'm not the man I used to be. Thank God."