Former motorcycle shop owner rides off the street and into supportive housing in H.B.
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Robert Taylor jokingly calls himself the only Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop owner in history without tattoos.
“I’m afraid of needles,” he said. “My customers, at one point, wanted to sleeve my arm; they pooled the money.”
The 71-year-old Taylor is full of life, despite being diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer — a medical designation he says does not define him. He lives happily in his one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of the Pelican Harbor affordable senior housing community in Huntington Beach.
During a recent interview on a rainy afternoon, the formerly homeless septuagenarian wore a shirt bearing an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin with words that roughly translate to, “I will protect my people.”
“I don’t know why I decided to wear it today, but the dang thing is worth about 300 bones on eBay,” he said with a laugh.
He’s been living at the Pelican Harbor community since February, after about 18 months in the Huntington Beach Navigation Center, a homeless shelter.
Before that, he was living out of his truck. Then he spent 10 days at a homeless encampment under the street near Katella Avenue and Beach Boulevard in Stanton.
“They set me up a bed and a table and a little lamp,” he said of his modest encampment. “You run over a million manhole covers, kathump, kathump. [But] it sounds a lot different when you’re underneath one.”
Taylor, a trained mechanic who owned the Bob Taylor’s Motors in Huntington Beach for about 40 years, experienced a relatively swift decline when arthritis began to affect his hands, leaving him unable to work and make the rent. Eventually, he was forced to liquidate the shop.
After that, the effects of taking prescription Xanax caused his mental state to decline, and he started shoplifting. The next several years found Taylor either living out of his truck or bouncing around. He served six months in North Kern State Prison in Delano around the onset of the pandemic for threatening someone with a shotgun, he said.
Today, Taylor takes accountability for his actions, something that has become a lot easier with a roof over his head.
Jamboree Housing Corp. President and Chief Executive Laura Archuleta said the most effective way to treat and provide services to unhoused people battling afflictions is to place them in supportive housing environments like Pelican Harbor.
“It’s very hard to break any cycle of chronic homelessness by providing services to folks while they’re on the street,” Archuleta said. “This way, they’re actually getting in a safe housing unit and then those services are brought to them. That can be everything from medicine management; it could be helping them schedule appointments with their physician, it could be addiction counseling, anything that they need.”
Irvine-based Jamboree developed Pelican Harbor, which features 43 apartments for low-income seniors and those experiencing homelessness.
More than 24,000 Californians live in Jamboree properties statewide, 2,000 or so coming directly from homelessness, according to Archuleta, who added that many are on the streets simply for economic reasons — not drugs or alcohol.
“They don’t have other corroborating issues,” she said. “These are people who could rent and live on their own without services, but they just cannot afford to.”
Taylor, who was once addicted to smoking methamphetamine, said he spent 27 years in Alcoholics Anonymous.
He said he was hospitalized when he tried fentanyl for the first and only time.
“The poor cat looks at the [reading] off the EKG machine and it’s just like ‘Home Alone,’” Taylor recalled, before imitating Macaulay Culkin in the 1990 film. “Ahh!”
The doctor told him that his heart would likely kill him before the cancer would.
“Without hesitation, I looked at him and said, ‘I’m on a mission from God,’” Taylor said. “And I’ve helped so many people since then.”
He extensively cared for one acquaintance, adding that she also made the move from the Navigation Center to Pelican Harbor. And Taylor usually leaves his apartment door open, as other residents know he is skilled at fixing things that are broken.
Taylor called Pelican Harbor “a slice of heaven.”
“The staff here is excellent,” he said. “I couldn’t ask for anything more — except a Crock-Pot.”
Pelican Harbor was in the news recently, as Jamboree went before the Huntington Beach City Council in September seeking approval for conversion of tax-exempt construction bonds. After an at-times contentious discussion between Jamboree representatives and council members, the council approved Jamboree’s request with a 4-3 vote.
“Typically, in a development like this, it takes one to two years for the residents to really gel and get used to living together,” Archuleta said of Pelican Harbor, which is nearly a year old.
“Especially for folks who have maybe lived out on the street longer, it just takes them some time. I always say after year two, it’s usually a really strong group and community that’s functioning well. We’re well on our way there.”
Archuleta said one resident has started her own small plant business, while another is a volunteer crossing guard.
“I know it was a little tough at that last council meeting, but I think in the long run this council will be proud of the property and proud of our residents,” she said.
As for Taylor, who calls himself “the most enthusiastic terminal cancer patient you’ll ever meet,” he enjoys toying with items like robots, drones and planes in his spare time.
He said he’s never feared death, adding that he’s looked it in the face many times as a longtime Harley rider.
“Everything’s an adventure,” he said. “Walking out of that door is an adventure.”
