Preparing To Become Homeless Again

I have been asked multiple times by several different people to make this fundraiser and my answer has been the same each time: I appreciate the concern and wish to help me, but I know my consistent struggles and need lately have drained on my social goodwill. There is only so much vulnerability you can share and so much anguish people can express sympathy for before it becomes too much and they tune out. I have spent my entire life in poverty, I know how this works.

I told those kind people asking to help me that I wouldn’t create yet another GoFundMe fundraiser until I felt all other options to save myself had been exhausted and I had no other way to address becoming homeless again for the third time.

Well, the day is here.

I’m usually much better at getting my stories across, either in fiction or in real life, but I’ve reached my utmost breaking point. Three days before my book deal in 2021, we found out our rent was quadrupling from $500 to $2000 overnight. IT wasn’t even my landlord responsible. The pandemic rent moratorium was ending and the government housing utility that had helped subsidize our rent costs for literally my entire upbringing had decided that not only was this change necessary, but also somehow morally justifiable.

If you’d like further details on that saga, you can read the initial post and updates of my last GFM, made at that time.

To bring us back to the present, if I hadn’t gotten a book deal literally 72 hours after that catastrophic change, I’d already be homeless again. My book advance has literally been the only thing keeping us afloat. We are no longer on government assistance. We pay our landlord directly, $2400 now.

He cares about us a lot. He worked with us the last time we were homeless to find a suitable home for us and our two dogs. He doesn’t want us on the street again. We are the only property he still owns. He’s sold all of his others and would be in full retirement if not for our house. He’s willing to let us stay here as long as we need to get in a financial position to buy it directly from him.

God, how desperately I wish we could do that. That has been my dream every waking moment of every day for years now. From the first day we moved in here over six years ago, I have never woken up once and felt secure, like I would still have the same bed under me in six months. I have never been able to shake the trauma of sleeping in parking lots and not knowing when my next meal would be.

But it’s clear now that won’t happen. I’m not the type of person that things work out for. I’ve tried everything I have since that first rent change to try and become a legitimate bet for a bank to give a loan to and it has run me into the ground. I can’t get a loan on self-employment income until I have at least two years of rising income, but paying $2400 plus utilities, plus work travel and promo expenses, plus food and basic hygiene expenses have put me in the worst financial circumstances I have ever been in my entire life.

I have 20k in CC debt from just this past year of trying to use credit cards to meet the gap in power, water, internet, car insurance, etc bills that couldn’t be covered in cash because that money was going to the rent instead. I have never been in so much debt before. My minimums to just keep current are nearly more than the specific allotment I allow myself from my book money for expenses each month. I am so terrified of money I get genuinely nauseous thinking about it. I’m developing an eating disorder because it feels good to save money by not eating and I hate myself whenever I spent money on food.

We’ve been trying to at least keep me current on my debts so that my credit doesn’t worsen any worse than it already has, because I’m our only hope of any house loan. My mother’s debts have become so delinquent that the bank shut down her entire checking and savings accounts just last week. We’ve been drowning just trying to stay afloat with the hope that if we could just make it until my next contract payment, just make it until I sell another book or two, just make it until I can establish a speaking engagement career that we could pull through.

Because we know that if we leave this house, it’s the end. We were last homeless for months in winter of 2016 and early 2017. We tried dozens of apartments and houses and our credit wasn’t good enough then to get us anywhere (and our credit was so much more healthy at that time!). Very few places would even consider our two dogs, a big lab/husky mix and a tiny chihuahua/poodle mix. We had to board our big girl and tote our little one with us. To this day she fears car rides because she thinks it means never going home again.

The housing market has only gotten worse since then. We have watched every single one of our formerly renting neighbors be pushed out so their homes could be listed for ever rising prices. We are the only renters left. Everyone else has been replaced.

I love living here. I like our house, I like that walking path, I like the recreation center. It feels like a betrayal to enjoy the things that are pricing me out of my home. My house is worth $460,000 as of posting this, almost another 100 grand from the last time I made a fundraiser like this, which was 50 grand above when I checked before. I can promise you that this property has never been and likely never will be worth half a million dollars. It is a cookie cutter place with thin walls and misbalanced doors. It barely even has a yard.

But it’s my home. But not for much longer.

I have $2,616 left to my name. That is barely enough to cover a single month’s rent, not counting my debt or any living expenses. I have hemorrhaged the rest of it trying to save us.

Just before New Years, my 67yo mother was injured at her workplace tripping over a box of unsorted inventory—she works at JoAnn Fabrics, which just filed for bankruptcy (not a surprise given how their negligence and mismanagement was what hurt my mother). She has been on medical leave from both her jobs for the past three months. This is what has dealt this mortal blow to our attempts at a life raft.

She’s finally returning to work now, but her healing has been a very slow process and it’s becoming increasingly clear that a woman who is nearly 70 should not have to stress her body this hard. My brother has been job searching since late October with very few leads.

It’s been on me, which I don’t feel is an unworthy burden. I love my family. I would be and am proud to provide for them. But I’m not enough to save us. I am accepting it is over now. I have tried everything. I’ve budgeted. I’ve listed valuables for sale. I’ve tried to position myself as a more valuable writer, more valuable speaker. I’ve been doing gig work with my mother from sun up to sunset nearly everyday since January, with my laptop on my lap as I work on my deadlines at the same time.

My second book in my contract was bumped until late 2025 because I couldn’t deliver my revision on time with all the fires I’ve been trying to put out this winter. This means I likely will not see another contract payment until at least late fall of this year. It won’t come in time to stop me from going dry.

I am going to lose my home again. I am going to be homeless again. I have no faith I will find a place and the worst part… The WORST part is that I KNOW that no where else will be cheaper. Even apartments in my area go for $1800. Even if we found somewhere, it wouldn’t be for much cheaper. It could even be higher. But I don’t have anything left. There’s nothing I can do anymore.

I’m asking for help to cover rent for a few more months so we can pack up and consolidate. My worst fear is being evicted and losing everything in addition to my home. At least this way, we can maybe buy some time to sell some more items and find a storage solution for others. We’ve lost a lot of possessions to rat infested storage facilities when we’ve been homeless in the past, so my mother would prefer to buy a storage container and store it at one of her boss’s property. That would eliminate monthly costs, but would be an expensive investment itself.

I am asking for help covering a few month’s rent so we can pack, sell, or dispose of our belongings. If I wasn’t worried about rent and keeping the lights on, it would be easier for me to finish my deadline work so I can help prepare too. It would also be nice to have a small cushion for moving out costs and initial storage. I wish I had faith enough here to ask for more to pull us through until I get paid again or sell something else, but I’m not the only person in the world struggling mightily right now. I feel awful asking for anything and I can’t bring myself to hope for a salvation that feels like an impossibility right now.

I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot work with this stress that is making me wish everything in life would just stop. I’m not asking you to help me fix my utility bills credit debt and I’m definitely not optimistic enough that some angel investor will come and buy our home for us. I just want the space to breathe so that I can face this inevitability with a bit more grace. I would just like to breathe a bit deeper enough to not fall further behind on my contracted work.

I’m sorry I’m not phrasing any of this with my trademark hope and optimism. It’s all gone. I have nothing left.

If you don’t like GFM or would just prefer to support me another way, I have other donation options at my website donation page. But just sharing this post with anyone helps a lot. Please don’t feel obligated.