He interviewed for Delta Airlines as a flight attendant. To chase his dreams, he had to live in JFK Airport: ‘I was homeless’
Dreams can come with a hefty price tag.
Chasing a dream can be costly, and Steve Owens (@iamsteveowens) from Los Angeles paid the price while training to become a flight attendant at Delta Airlines. With his limited salary, he alleged that he became homeless in pursuit of his dream.
“Once upon a time, I was homeless. I lived in JFK Airport—John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, New York. I lived there from May 2015 until October 15th, 2015,” Owens told TikTok. When he first moved to Los Angeles, Owens claimed that he couldn’t find a job.
“I couldn’t get a job at the T-Mobile store. I couldn’t get a job at the Vietnamese pho restaurant,” he recalled. Owens needed the funds but was at his wits’ end. One night, he went out to a bar with only $7 left in his pocket. It was happy hour, and he could buy two drinks for exactly that price, so he went.
“I go to the bar. There’s a woman sitting at the bar,” Owens said. The woman later walked up to him and allegedly told him, “You’d make a great flight attendant.” Owens hadn’t thought about becoming a flight attendant before. It wasn’t a childhood dream, but the comment inspired him to apply to become a flight attendant.
“Three weeks after I apply, I get an interview for Delta Airlines,” Owens said. Although they were considering him for the role, he still didn’t have a passport. Owens explained that anyone who gets a flight attendant interview must have a passport, and he didn’t have one at the time. When he was about to get one, Owens said his car note was due at the same time. He called his father to ask for help paying off the $350.
Becoming a Delta Airlines flight attendant
“What if you don’t get the job?” his father allegedly asked him. Owens said he hadn’t even thought he might not get the job until his father brought it up. But Owens took the gamble, choosing to apply for the passport instead of paying off the car note.
“So, I got the passport. I get the job at Delta Airlines,” he said. Although he lived in Los Angeles, Delta Airlines is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Owens had to train in Atlanta and claimed he was only paid $7.50 an hour at the time.
“But I’m paying rent in Los Angeles. Those are not the same cost of living. I could not make the rent, so I had to rent out my place. And in renting out the place I was living, it effectively left me homeless,” Owens explained. Left with no other options, Owens said he ended up living at JFK Airport. In the flight attendant lounge, he would get a couple of chairs and form a makeshift bed. Sometimes there was only one chair, and he would sit there and fall asleep with his arm propped up.
“I would get up in the morning, throw water in my face, put my deodorant on, brush my teeth, go upstairs, get on the airplane,” he recalled. Owens would greet passengers with “Welcome aboard Delta” without knowing what he was going through.
“Next thing, I’m in Amsterdam, or I’m in Greece, or I’m in Rome,” Owens said. He claimed that other people saw him as a successful jetsetter on social media, but in reality, Owens said he worked those shifts to get a bed and a shower. “But what you didn’t see behind the social media at that time was that I was homeless,” he stated.
Almost losing the job because of a shower
“Because there were no showers in that flight attendant lounge, I had to sneak into the pilot lounge because the pilots had a shower,” Owens explained. He believed that if he got caught, he could be fired. One of those nights, the lights turned on, and Owens thought he’d be caught while he was shivering and naked.
“God, I don’t know why you brought me to this place. I don’t know why you brought me here, but I know that there must be something here for me if I’m standing here like this. Please don’t let me get caught,” Owens secretly prayed. He wasn’t caught and fired over the ordeal, and he eventually told a fellow flight attendant about his plight.
“What I got wrong about homelessness and homeless people until it was me is that homelessness is not an identity—it’s a condition; it’s a circumstance,” he commented. Owens believes that circumstance and identity shouldn’t be equated, and he encouraged others to keep building towards their dreams regardless. Even those who feel trapped by their circumstances eventually recover, like this woman who became homeless in Philadelphia because she struggled with addiction.
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