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He used to sleep in parking lots. Now, he's got a second chance to provide for his family.

His life is a long way away from the Bronx, where Jose Vera grew up.

It’s a sunny day in Grove Park.

Jose Vera, 25, plays with his kids, 7, 6 and 5 months, chasing them around the playground there.

“(I) Never thought of the day I’d become a family man. I was always in the streets,” Vera said. “And ‘always in the streets’ is not a good thing, you know?”

Vera is enrolled in the Construction Ready program, trying to provide from his family.

“I’m happy I got the opportunity to go to school, get my credentials so I can give them everything I didn’t have from my family,” Vera explained.

It’s a long way away from the Bronx, where Vera grew up.

“You don’t know when your next meal is gonna come, and you don’t know when your next due date is gonna come. And when I say due date, you don’t know when you’ll probably have a person that’ll want to fight you or shoot you, so it ain’t nothing but survival,” Vera explained.

In 2007, Vera moved to Atlanta. But shortly after that, his mother left him to go back to New York. Within a year, he fell into homelessness.

“The landlord comes and says, ‘You got an eviction notice’,” he recalled. “I made my way to Five Points, then to Garnett Station.”

“We used to sleep in the parking lots, man. It was rough,” Vera said continued. “Big cockroaches, big rats passing by. You never know what you’re gonna get bit by. You never know what a person’s gonna do to you.”

IN CONSTRUCTION | Watch the full documentary now

Vera explained how he used to get dinged for soliciting for money or loitering, “I done had guns pulled out on me … for asking for money!”

“I had to grow up faster,” he said. “And it’s like, growing up faster, either two things is gonna happen to you: you gonna go to jail, or you gonna be buried. And that was my problem: in and out of jail, to survive.”

At his lowest point, Vera went to the Gateway Center for homelessness on Pryor Street in Atlanta. He stayed there for two months, and began progressing. A year later, he met his wife.

“That following year, we had our first daughter. The year after that, we had our second daughter. And then we got married,” Vera listed.

Now, Vera is trying to continue on the straight path by completing the program, a chance for him to provide for his family

"Now I got a reflection of me – a boy – and I want him to take the straight path or the right path,” Vera explained. “I don’t want him ever to say that his father or mother abandoned him.”

NEXT CHAPTER >>> Tyree Thomas's story

IN CONSTRUCTION | Inside the program that's giving people on Atlanta's Westside a chance to rise up

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