My husband "tries not to let it get to him, and I can tell he’s working hard to keep up appearances in front of me and the few friends who still speak to us."

My husband and I have been homeless since January 2020.

I remember the feeling of being up for almost 24 hours, packing a moving van with only a few of my many possessions, and having to leave behind furniture we couldn’t pack. I’ll never forget the tears falling in the passenger seat as we drove to a storage locker. The further away from the apartment we got, the heavier my heart felt.Advertisement

“We’ll be OK,” my husband “Steve” (not his real name) tried to assure me, but I ignored him. The combination of the lack of sleep and the growing worry forming in my chest silenced anything he said.

After unpacking the van at the storage unit, we went to a hotel and tried to figure out where we would live. With an eviction record (Steve and I both lost our jobs and I’d been out of work for three months at that point, so we were unable to pay the rent), we knew finding a new place would be difficult.

The hotel was supposed to be a temporary home, but with Steve being between jobs, my low credit score, and no idea where we were going to live, we just kept paying for another week. And then another. We were lucky to find a room with a kitchen, so I could cook, which saved us money and gave me some sense of a “normal” routine.

In the meantime, we applied for every apartment we could find and afford. However, this was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made the already difficult process of scheduling appointments to see potential apartments even more difficult. Then, the buildings where we could get an appointment wouldn’t accept our application because of our low credit rating and, of course, our eviction. Advertisementhttps://3de863fa9b86e308115c8f69ee4d5d46.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Steve and I saw nearly 30 apartments, both in the city and the suburbs, but nothing was available to us. And even if our application had been accepted, we would have needed to pay our first month’s rent and a security deposit or two months rent in advance, which was way beyond what we could afford.

“Steve and I saw nearly 30 apartments, both in the city and the suburbs, but nothing was available to us.”

We were trying to save whatever money we could for an apartment but the funds just weren’t there. The money we wanted to put aside for our deposit went to paying the weekly rent on our hotel room and without being able to find any help from social services, we were stuck. Read more