Help Hebi Secure Housing in MN Rent Crisis

Hi, I’m Hebi.

 

My name stands for the gifts life gives back to me. It's a name-form-shape I gave for the haebaragi, the Korean word for the sunflowers that I'd see gaily tracking the sun. Hebi is also the Japanese word for the snake, a basking creature of benevolence that embodies transformation and protection against illness. The snake was also that very silver-tongued biblical creature that tempted Eve away from the pedestal of feminity.

I like to think that this name I've created guides me and provides a necessary path back to myself. It's a blessing, a wish, and a spell I keep to help me light the journey ahead of me. I know that whenever I lean into the truths my body shares I can trust in life's ability to give back to me inasmuch as the way the sun provides warmth for all those who bask under it.

 

Today, I share with you my name as an invitation to hold me with the tenderness I will need in the coming days.

 

 

I’m Hebi, a queer nonbinary embodied pole dancer and movement artist in Minneapolis, MN.

 

 

I'm also chronically ill in a pretty significant way.

 

Over the past seven years, I’ve been living and breathing right alongside you, albeit a bit more laboriously than most. I've experienced multiple traumas, been unhoused and house hopped a dozen times within a year, found myself relocating to hazardous apartments that contained life-threatening mold, lived through long COVID and unemployment without benefits, got diagnosed with an extremely rare congenital disorder, and have accrued at least a half dozen medical conditions composed of an alphabet soup of acronyms. During the height of last year's wildfire season, I had become too sick to breathe air and drink water, let alone leave my bedside without permanently compromising my health.

 

I'm here today in the capacity that I am because a beautiful thing has been emerging within this collective consciousness we share. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been witnessing an outpouring of local and global compassion taking place, meeting the wounds of human suffering with human love. Through the help of neighbors and strangers from all over the world, I've been able to move out of two mold-infested homes (a situation where the alternative would have been certain death), get connected to a gender-affirming workplace, and receive emergency food and rental assistance via the state. This allowed me the space I needed to begin paying for the out-of-pocket treatment costs for my MCAS (mast cell activation syndrome, a severely debilitating illness wherein my experience is beyond the scope of words at the moment). Since then, my condition has stabilized and even began improving. I’ve learned that I can always trust in my community to uplift me. I could finally, finally, start healing my body and spirit.

 

But relying on the government to understand and assist those of us with really complicated bodies has its downfalls.

 

On January 25th, 2022, the state of MN decided to shutter its RentHelp program, which provided over 16,000 of the most housing insecure Twin Cities residents federal emergency relief funds. The program was originally estimated to continue until October 2022, which would have allowed me the time and grace to pay for my ongoing medical treatment, move to a safer home, and develop my professional skill sets to land a financially secure job. For the first time I had felt optimistic about the trajectory I was on. Instead we had three days’ notice, no reinstatement of an eviction moratorium to give us grace to apply for aid or jobs elsewhere, and I was still struggling to pay for food and meds after the state had cut off its pandemic emergency benefits— I was denied coverage for EBT benefits and am relying on paying out of pocket to see an out-of-network MCAS specialist.

 

On March 1st I will owe roughly $2900 in rent, utilities, medication, and food, all essential needs under human rights code, to make it through the month. I have also found a new home that is pollutant-free and protected against the threat of mold and wildfire smoke, which will cost roughly $1500 in rent and utilities alone. With the added costs of medication, food, and moving house, I will need an additional $2600 beginning in April.

 

A breakdown of costs:

 

 

$2895 needed by first week of March.

 

$2595 extra needed by first week of April.

 

$5490 total needed to survive the spring.

 

 

Since having received notice several weeks prior, I have begun mobilizing my community to prepare for action. In the meantime, I am continuing to hunt for jobs, meet with providers, send insurance appeals, manage my online sex work and body work, and build community circles of solidarity with those experiencing similar levels of duress. I am also pursuing extensive coursework, mentorship opportunities, and scholarship applications to expand my professional skill sets for industries I am deeply passionate about.

 

What I need now is the funds to keep doing exactly what I’m doing- giving it my all- and landing into a new, brighter future with grace. Many of you who have not experienced the complete and total dysregulation of the nervous system through an illness such as MCAS may not know that this is an illness borne from multiple traumas over the course of a lifetime, traumas that will continue to compound until we are ready and resourced to hold and heal them. I know in my body that my mission for self-preservation is a larger cry for community solidarity. In meeting my body at exactly where it needs to heal, I also bring into this world the energy, resources, compassion, to provide a safe container for those of us with complicated bodies to heal.

 

So it is with the help of the community that I need to lean into. I am here, breathing laboriously, believing in our collective ability to let me land in a soft place during these trying times. May we all experience the trust, containment, and release of letting our truths guide us to the light of beautiful days ahead.

 

 

Thank you for being here. I am Hebi, and I believe my truth has the capacity to generate change. I believe in the transformative power of us.