I had to retire before I planned to due to health problems which meant a substantial drop in income. Social security just isn’t enough to live on. But an apartment became available in my mother’s building, the owner let me have it for $300 so I took it. It was all I could afford. It was in bad shape but I got to work papering and painting and making it a fairly nice place to live…until winter came. The heating system was horrendous. The entire downstairs froze–radiators, water, food–everything, except the mice (I’m phobic about mice). Upstairs it was 90+ degrees with the windows open. So for 10 years, I made due by often turning the furnace off at bedtime and hoping the two cats and I wouldn’t die of hyperthermia by morning. The outside temp was often far below zero. By the last year I was there I had no running water, no working range or refrigerator (but in winter it didn’t matter), and bad electricity that nearly started a potentially tragic fire. Camp toilets are no picnic if you must use one every day. But, still, it was a roof over my head. The city stepped in and I found a vacate order on the door.

I told them I had nowhere to go. They relented and said if water was restored I could stay. So I paid $700 (a fortune for me) to fix the broken pipes and the water was restored. I wept for joy, truly. The same afternoon the city turned it off because the landlady owed the water dept. $17,000. I wept again but it wasn’t for joy. That’s what they told me anyway. So I found a raze order on the door. I had already gotten myself on the waiting list for affordable housing. But it was a long waiting list. I applied for low income home loans–maybe I could buy the building for a song and fix it, or buy a small house. It took three months for them to tell me my income was too low for a low-income home loan. I was devastated. I was also applying for apartments but at $25 per app, I couldn’t afford to apply for many per month. My low income disqualified me for all of them. The rental companies want an income of 3X the rent. The lowest rent is $100 less than my income. Most are far more than my income.

I had been on the Section 8 waiting list for years. I sent them another app. but was told it has a year-long wait period if the list doesn’t close. I contacted St. Vinnies, The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, 211, the local Social Services, CAP and Emergency Rent Assistance, the Commission on Aging, and The United Way–every social service organization in this state that might help. The county is broke, the waiting lists are closed, city hall doesn’t believe in ”government handouts” so they don’t care if the programs are funded or not. There is no homelessness prevention. We do, however, have a good night-time shelter. (That’s where I am right now writing this.) A plastic recliner to sleep on is better than being on the street. The landlady lost the building because she hadn’t been paying the taxes for a long time. The deed went to the county and I found another vacate order on the door–and private property ”This Property Belongs To The County” signs on the doors. By that time my health crashed.

I couldn’t take the stress and fear of looming homelessness. I have multiple serious health disorders and 3rd stage kidney failure. The hospital put me on bed rest, no solid food, steroids to turn off my immune system so it would hopefully stop trying to kill me and meds for depression. The side effects were terrible. I had no protection from COVID or flu or anything else and either could kill me. I was sheltering in place. I explained this to the county with no reply. And I missed a court appearance. At that point, I didn’t care. The only thing that kept me alive was knowing my pets needed me. I was terrified of losing them. I was terrified the Sheriff would come knocking on the door any minute and I would have to grab the two cats and leave with nowhere to go. Three city officials came on March 5th 2024 and that’s the day I became homeless. I had nowhere to go. My niece took me to my mother’s apartment with 2 cats that nearly got mom thrown out of her HUD apartment building.

The eviction came after I left my apartment and was no longer even living there. It was because of foreclosure and because I ”refused” to obey a vacate order and leave the building. So now I’m branded as a homeless person (I must be mentally ill if I’m a homeless person, right?) and with an eviction so I can’t be trusted to rent another apartment. I’m off the waiting lists for affordable housing because of the eviction. Maybe I can get back on in three years. To add insult to injury I had 2 weeks to pack and move my possessions. I ordered supplies, it took some time for them to arrive, I don’t have a car so I have to order everything, I set to work every day packing but I was so weak and sick I couldn’t do it all before the deadline. They told me if I needed more time I could have it but when I asked for it, they refused and I lost everything I had. Everything. The county told me they were tearing the building down because it had no water, but I learned they sold it and everything I had with it.

I had the Housing Authority get very nasty a few days ago and accuse me of ”just sitting on my a** all those months when I should have been out finding an apartment.” I’ve been writing for magazines my whole life but I don’t have words for what I feel, or even a fairly decent comeback for the slap in the face by the Housing Authority the other day. Something fundamental within is lost when you lose everything. And I’m not sure if it comes back.