How a sommelier fell victim to the homelessness crisis in California

Opus One, Château Lynch-Bages or Petrus. The crimson ribbons of fine wine trickled delicately into his customers’ bulbous crystal glasses.

Mark-Steven Holys had a knack for recommending the right bottle, for expertly carving the chateaubriand steaks and pheasant and for remembering the dietary quirks of a clientele that included many of California’s boldfaced names.

He waited on George Shultz, the former secretary of state; Joe Montana, the champion quarterback and Steve Jobs, the Apple founder.

Mr Holys looks back on his decades as a sommelier and tuxedo-clad server from inside a Coleman tent in an Oakland homeless encampment, where the rats, he says, are as big as footballs.

He joined the ranks of the unsheltered five years ago, another life upended among a diverse population that is so hard to categorise.

Coming hand-in-hand with the state’s worsening housing shortage, the number of homeless people has swelled in the Bay Area, rising 47 per cent in Oakland alone over the past two years to more than 4,000.

California, the country’s wealthiest and most populous state, also has the most homeless, an unremitting crisis that has confounded the state’s political leaders for decades and exposed one of the most extreme manifestations of economic inequality gripping the country.

Tent encampments — Oakland city officials count 90 of them — are now as much a part of the landscape as the bars and restaurants that cater to the city’s rising affluence. Many Americans are one medical emergency, one layoff, one family disaster away from bankruptcy or losing the roofs over their heads.

For Mr Holys, the journey from wine steward at some of the finest restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area to sleeping in a tent on a strip of dirt next to a freeway was a gradual unravelling.

His struggles with drugs, his failed marriages, his larceny when he needed money — they all contributed to his present straits.

“I tasted some incredible wines,” he said from a wicker chair in his tent that he calls his throne. “You can swirl and sip, and five minutes later you were still getting layers.”

After many restaurant jobs through the 1980s and 1990s, Mr Holys says his undoing came with an addiction to crack cocaine. He stole to fuel his habit and spent a total of eight years in prison.

“I was the type of guy who would break into your car and steal the change in your ashtray,” he said.

But it was not until several years after his last release from jail, in 2010, that addiction took over again and no one from his fractured family was there to catch him.

He moved from one homeless encampment to the next until arriving earlier this year at his current spot by the 880 freeway and train tracks.

Mr Holys loves talking about wine and laments that he has few people around him who share his passion.

Over the relentless din of eight lanes of traffic and Amtrak and commuter trains rolling past his encampment in East Oakland, he evokes Opus, the Napa Valley cabernet blend, and Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, the left-bank Bordeaux. He smiles at the memory of sampling a 1974 Mondavi Reserve cabernet sauvignon.

But pinot noir is his favourites grape. “When it’s good and on point it’s an extraordinary experience,” he says, shirtless and in shorts on an unusually hot day last week.

Mr Holys sees parallels between the cultivation of wine and his struggles. Pinot noir vines in particular are fragile and finicky, he says; the skins are thinner than other varieties and the best vines are stressed to produce better fruit.

“Roots are made to suffer. They have to strain for water,” he said. “It’s a metaphor for what people have to go through.”

Mr Holys worked at restaurants where it was not uncommon to serve a $600 (£488) bottle of Puligny-Montrachet, the venerable Burgundy. If there was anything left in the bottle when the patrons left, he made sure to drip the remnants into his own glass.

He has witnessed the extremes of the Bay Area, where the median home price in San Francisco is $1.3m (£1.1m) and Teslas seem as common as Toyotas.

He graduated from Palo Alto High School, one of the country’s most prestigious public schools, and studied real estate and business at Foothill College nearby. He played golf at close to a competitive level, he said, scoring in the low 70s, and took dozens of trips to Lake Tahoe to ski.

He had five children with three women and worked long hours at more than a dozen restaurants.

He is aware of his flaws and does not retreat from discussing them. He says his Christian faith has helped him control his substance abuse, but he is wary to declare full victory.

“It’s really hard to rebuild a person,” Mr Holys says.

His neighbours at the encampment were pushed onto the streets by drugs, mental illness and family tragedies. One neighbour, barely lucid, wears the ashes of a recently deceased friend in a vial around his neck. An ex-Marine sleeps nearby.

“You’re going to find the criminals, prostitutes and the malefactors,” Mr Holys said. “But you’ll also find people who are saving money wherever they can and who are trying to get out of the homeless quicksand.

“I’ve met a stockbroker and former athletes on the street,” he said. “Once you’re deeply tattooed by this thing it’s very hard to get the ink out of your life.”

From the sloping strip of dirt on which they sleep, residents can see the tips of skyscrapers in the Financial District of San Francisco across the bay. They live in tents and shacks fashioned from jagged pieces of plywood, discarded carpets, discarded 2-by-4s and tarps.

“Being in a homeless encampment is like being the grate at the bottom of a drain,” Mr Holys said during a conversation about rats that gnawed their way into his tent. “We survive mostly on the garbage that flows down to us.”

His former co-workers and customers remember him fondly, despite what they described as his unpredictability, his absences, his demons.

“When he was on — he was awesome,” said Vince Maddalena, who worked with Mr Holys at Maddalena’s, a restaurant in Palo Alto, now closed, that served Silicon Valley pioneers like David Packard. Mr Jobs was said to have discussed the founding of Apple with his partner, Steve Wozniak, at Maddalena’s.

These days, Mr Holys collects bottles and cans, cashing them in by the bagful at recycling centres. Despite previous injuries to his wrist and two hernia surgeries, he sometimes helps a friend instal hardwood floors.

He also collects federal disability and Social Security payments that amount to around $960 (£781) a month.

Mr Holys has a plan for when he finds permanent shelter. He will get a bottle of Royal Tokaji, the Hungarian dessert wine. He plans to choose a bottle rated 6 Puttonyos, the sweetest variety. It will be a symbol, he says, of putting a bitter past behind him.

“My life has been such a wild ride,” he said. “This will be a bottle of gratitude.”

The New York Times