I have been in a housing crisis for awhile. Years to be exact, it is always one thing after another. I started out on a housing list in 2019 in Boulder, Colorado. I had assumed the list was so long my name hadn't come up. I don't remember how, but in 2021 a homeless advocate reached out to me. He had somehow gotten my name from the homeless shelter. While talking with him we found out that I had somehow gotten lost in the shuffle somewhere. So, he worked with me and got me back on the list and due to some of my medical issues he was taking my file to their monthly meetings where a group would decide who got the available vouchers for that month. He did tell me that some meetings there just simply wasn't any vouchers available.
A few months went by and I hadn't heard from him so I called the number that I had for him only to find it wasn't his number anymore and had since moved on to somewhere else. So once again I had to give my information and wait for the person that took his position to get ahold of me. Of course once that happened I then had to wait for them to find out where all his caseloads went. I had once again been lost in the shuffle. After a few months of meeting with the new homeless outreach team they finally had found all my previous paperwork. They wanted a letter from my doctor stating how I truly needed housing in order to get some medical things done that they could not do because I was homeless. I made an appointment with my primary doctor and even invited the homeless outreach team member to go with me. Which he did and he didn't even have to ask my doctor anything, my doctor had already wrote me a letter about needing housing.
Months went by and I still had not heard anything about housing. I ended up in the hospital for ten days and when I got out my son didn't want me out on the street alone so I went and stayed in his garage. He lived about an hour from Boulder and it just wasn't feasible me getting over there a few times a week for my mental health appointments, so I started mental health services in the city he lived in. I was really happy with the therapist I was connected to and she really tried to help get me into emergency housing, but there are so many hoops you have to go through it ends up being a really long process.
I then decided to start a go fund me to get me moved to Missouri where all of my family lives except for two of my boys, Michael and Bobby. My son Preston came out to bring me back once I had the funds raised to get back here. It is so much cheaper here to live, and I have a lot of support here.
Within a week of arriving here, I went to the housing authority and put my name on three housing waiting lists. I came here very end of October 2022. It is now August 2023, I called in July and they told me my name came up as next on the list but when she checked my background I had an eviction from 2014 for non payment of rent. So, basically I do not qualify for low income housing because I couldn't pay my rent almost 10 years ago? Who makes these rules. How is it that I obviously couldn't pay my rent so I don't qualify to live at a place rent is based on income so you can afford it? What gives?
As soon as I am in a bigger city and not out in the middle of nowhere I am going to start finding out about how to be a voice not just for myself, but for all the others that can't get help they so desperately need because of rules that have been put in place that make no sense. There are so many things I am passionate about, and I want to be a voice for those that can't use their own. There is a housing crisis, and it's hard to get into affordable housing. The housing waitlist is so long so many people have to stay on the streets.
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