The Struggle of a LOCAL PUNK in Buffalo

My name is Steve Ardo, I’m a queer Buffalonian, and I’ve lost the past combined 16 +years of my life to homelessness and poverty. I have a plan to end this cycle and create a real, financially stable future for myself; however, I need to rely on others temporarily to truly get back on my feet. I’m an illustration-focused graphic designer who was able to obtain his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) back in 2012 while in the middle of homelessness, and is now dead-set on getting his Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) to make a real life out of his dreams, passions, and drive. Sounds simple, right? Well, this is a story…

First things first: I suffer from Major Depression, High Anxiety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) —a trifecta that extremely limits what I can do in daily life (especially in a job) and isn’t helped by having an extremely low self-esteem from being abused emotionally and mentally by people in my life along with past employers. In early 2007 my father, a former heavy alcoholic who mentally abused me as a kid, passed away after suffering for over a year with cancer that spread from his prostate. A year later I was forced into homelessness by my (now ex) alcoholic step father who tried to force himself upon me after threatening to physically assault me. That was what was supposed to be my final semester at community college. Failing that semester I transferred to the University at Buffalo (UB) that fall to pursue a Bachelor’s. Due to continued homelessness and major mental illness I failed a few more years as I lacked any form of stability in my life. I never gave up and pushed myself against impossible odds to walk across the stage at UB and rightfully claim my BFA in May 2012. Even with a degree in hand I still was homeless and soon found myself at having to pay back my private student loans that totaled over $1,000 a month as I had no other way of paying for college. In early 2013 I lost my partner Tim (a man I had loved for more than 9 years) in a head-on collision on a snow-covered, icy winter road, and a year later my best friend Andrew passed away after slipping into a coma he had no way of waking up from.

In the past 10 or so years since graduating I was extremely fortunate to have found my purpose and meaning in the chaos through working as an artist for Buffalo’s local punk scene and illustrating my own ongoing series of friendly, approachable monsters as a foil to my own severe mental illness and disability. My punk family adopted me and showed me that I mattered and as a gay man I was accepted unconditionally. In short, for the first time in my life I had real direction and hope. I believed in myself.

I am going back to my alma mater, the University of Buffalo, to pursue my MFA starting in 2025. Tuition is waived so that’s not a problem, the challenge is being able to have an income so that I can sit down and rework, update, and improve my portfolio to be able to apply without the constant fear of how I’m going to survive and make it through each day. Even with public assistance safety-nets in place it barely makes a dent in my monthly expenses. I’ve spent the past 16 years (up to last year) pretty much taking care of problems and issues and arose on my own even as I went for a total of 7 years homeless. I had a good-paying, “real”, stable job for over 3 years starting in April 2019 that plummeted downhill when my own managers began targeting and harassing me as retaliation for reporting another manager for abusing, taking advantage of, and mistreating a friend I cared about even while at work in front of me and fellow co-workers. It was a strictly office job and something I could actually handle due to my limitations that I was honest with them about my struggles from day one. They achieved their goal of forcing me from my job through different avenues such as changing my responsibilities to take on 2 different roles instead of one, refusing to acknowledge my older brother’s death (while previously supporting other teammates’ losses and showing sympathy and care to them) and never informing me of bereavement, constantly making me feel worthless, making me work more than an 8 hour shift on a daily basis against my request to be able to leave on time, and penalizing me for not being able to adhere to a brand new quota that preciously never existed despite them being well-aware of my constant struggle with PTSD. I was so terrified of how they would treat me every day that the anxiety became so overwhelming I could barely wake up in the morning and used up every sick day as I accrued them to avoid feeling completely inadequate for a day. The head of Human Resources stood by and watched it all unfold without lifting a finger and continually wrote me up while fully-knowing what was being done to me. They let me go feeling more undeserving of worth than when I first walked in there. Considering all the trauma and hurt I’ve been through I barely had any self-worth just from being constantly let down and left to deal with problems all on my own. It’s been a year and a half since I lost my job and I am still trying to recover from the extreme trauma that was inflicted upon me from the years. I am not in a good place mentally where I’m able to find and keep a job so I’m stuck on living on scraps from Temporary Cash Assistance and SNAP/Food Stamps while my mom has done everything in her power to try and keep me afloat —for reference, my monthly rent is $850 for an apartment I’ve lived in since May 2019. I cannot ask her for help anymore as she just doesn’t have it and is struggling on her end. I don’t want to rely on my own remaining parent to keep myself from drowning at the age of 36, but I literally didn’t have any other resources available to me at all. This is honestly why I need your help.

What I’m asking for is temporary help to have about 5 to 6 months of financial relief to be able to work diligently on my portfolio for my upcoming graduate studies career at UB along with a new laptop as I’ve been relying solely on a 2007 MacBook I purchased from a dear friend back in 2013 for all of my projects. With that under my belt along with more time to focus on my mental health, I would be free to use the future leading up to grad school to find a more-permanent way to support myself. While studying for my MFA I can earn an income as a teaching assistant and after graduating I can teach at a college-level. Having a Masters would open up so many doors for me as an artist and graphic designer here. Buffalo is my home and I have no desire to uproot myself from very loving and accepting punk, art, and music communities where I can be openly queer and express myself without fear.

Thank you sincerely for your time.

-Steve Ardo (LOCAL PUNK)