Behind the Eight Ball: How to Become Homeless in the Richest Country in the World

I grew up poor.

Mama made it clear that our circumstances were a product of her decisions. Not our caste. Not a lack of intelligence. Not a generational defect. She told me, “I make enough mistakes for the both of us. Watch and learn.”

After I became a high school administrator, I learned that schools consider students homeless if their families are living in their car or on the streets, living in a shelter or in transitional housing like a motel, and/or are doubled up with family members. It was then that I realized the extent of my own childhood homelessness. Between the ages of three and five, Mama and I were unhoused almost as much as we were housed. Our primary fallback was a motel on Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, a vacant lot away from the Kmart, which we referred to as the roach motel. It was always where we went after being evicted from our apartment.

It was also where we went when Mama’s older sister Beth had enough of us staying with her. When we didn’t have money to stay at the roach motel, we drifted around, finding a room at the UC Davis Hospital to sleep in until security found us and kicked us out. Other times Mama had me crawl under the coin operated bathroom door at the Greyhound Bus Station so I could let her in. Once inside, she’d sit on the toilet and I’d sit on her lap and sleep. When push came to shove, we split up. She went to the women-only shelter, and I went to the Children’s Receiving Home until she could get us a room at the roach motel on Stockton. The Children’s Receiving Home is a group home-like facility for abused and neglected children—most often when they’ve been removed from their home.

After I turned five, instead of experiencing months housed and unhoused, we began to experience longer stretches of stability. Throughout first grade we maintained a residence on W Street, two blocks from Sacramento High School. The summer between first and second grade we moved to Longview, Washington, where we were housed, but hungry. When we returned to Sacramento that August, Mama had a hard time getting on her feet, which resulted in a brief period of homelessness. Our day time was punctuated with long walks across town. One day I was tired from the walking, so we stopped at Fremont Park between Q and P Streets on Sixteenth Street to rest. I fell asleep on Mama’s lap. Years later, when we moved to the Camellia Court apartments, kitty-corner from Fremont Park, a middle school classmate recognized me from that day when I was eight. He threatened to tell everyone. When I told Mama, she recommended that I look him straight in the face and deny it. That’s what I did. I acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about, even though I felt deeply ashamed about the truth he knew.

Our next experience with homelessness happened in 1986, when we moved back to Detroit, Mama’s hometown, when I was in fifth grade. Being homeless in Detroit presented a different set of challenges. We didn’t dare sit idle in a park or walk in unknown neighborhoods. There, we stayed mostly in shelters.

First, it was The Salvation Army. Then a Catholic shelter run by nuns, where every morning we were required to wake up very early to make our beds with hospital corners before leaving the premises. Our third shelter was in an older building kitty-corner from the old Tiger Stadium, which overnight, transformed into a women’s shelter housing nearly one hundred women and children.

It was still baseball season. On game nights, as we lined up to enter the building, you could hear the announcer and the crowds. We only stayed there for a week-and-a-half because Mama convinced herself that a woman she’d argued with was going to stab her overnight. Just before lights out, we gathered our things and left. Like we had in Sacramento, we made our way to the Greyhound Bus Station. Instead of sleeping in the bathroom, we sat in the waiting area in the coin-operated TV seats, periodically paying for the right to sit, sleep, and watch TV.

At the bus station, Mama made quick friends with a man who worked there. Even though he was a stranger, we stayed with him in his studio apartment for a week. She slept with him in the main room, while I slept on a cot in the kitchen. She said the roaches came out of the woodwork with the lights off, so whenever I was sent to bed, I made sure to cover my head with the sheet and blanket, leaving only my mouth and nose uncovered, fearing the roaches would climb into my ears or into my underwear as I slept.

While Black Americans historically experienced disparities in homeownership rates, Mama’s family had a history of homeownership. In 1958 her parents, Edward and Ella Mae Wilson, were among the first black families to move into a house on Parkside Street in the University of Detroit District.

“Blockbusting” was a practice that real estate agents used to stoke fear in white homeowners by telling them that Blacks were moving into their white neighborhood driving down the selling price. Then they’d turn around and victimize Black home buyers by reselling the homes at inflated prices and rates. Eventually the property values dropped, leaving the new Black homeowners with homes that were overleveraged. Another aspect of this practice included steep penalties for late or missing payments, often resulting in high numbers of mortgage defaults. Mama and her siblings were children when they first moved in. I imagine, given what I’ve learned through family stories, that Granddaddy Edward was a victim of these predatory practices. Consequently, they were in their dream home for less than a decade before being forced to move back into a predominantly Black and troubled area of Detroit.

When I grew up in the 1980s and 90s, the prevailing notion was that hard work and an education were the golden ticket out of poverty and into the American Dream. Even though I attended thirteen elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools, I graduated and promised myself that I would never again experience homelessness.

After high school, I joined the Navy. This ushered me into homeownership. A year into my service period, I got married. Four months later, we decided to buy a home. At the time, we both received spousal benefits, increasing our pay, making it possible to purchase a house. That was when I learned that as servicemembers, we were entitled to the Veteran Home Loan program. It allowed us to purchase our home for 0% down, requiring us to pay only the closing costs. Again and again, the VA Home Loan program guaranteed my ability to purchase a home. While in the Navy, and after I was honorably discharged, I attended school, earning my Bachelor’s degree three-and-a-half years after I left the Navy.

For the next thirty years, first with my husband, then after my divorce and on my own, I maintained a homeownership streak, taking my three children and myself to better homes each time.

When I first moved to Iowa, in a throwback to the days of redlining, as soon as I walked into the bank to sign the loan paperwork, there was suddenly a problem. Later, my realtor told me that he had to remind bank officials that they’d already issued a promissory note; backing out of the deal would be illegal. Instead, they raised the rate, required a higher down payment, and added private mortgage insurance (PMI). At the time, I was told, there were few bank agents who were certified in the Veteran Home Loan process. As a result, none of the banks could provide us with a VA home loan, forcing us to go the conventional route.

With the proceeds from the sale of our home in Washington, plus cashing-out my teacher retirement account from Washington State, and a two-thousand-dollar loan from my then-husband’s parents, we were able to produce the down payment needed to secure the loan for my first place in Iowa, a townhome. On top of the mortgage $1200 per month was the required private mortgage insurance (PMI) of $180 a month, in case I defaulted. This money went to the company, none of which I could ever recoup. (Yet another way some people can get behind the eight ball when they are required to pay additional money, just in case.) It took six years to meet the eighty percent of the value of the townhome required to drop the PMI, which equaled almost thirteen thousand dollars. Despite nearly losing our home during the 2008 economic downturn, my sons and I remained there for ten years, the longest time I’d ever lived anywhere. I rented it out for another five years after we moved into a house.

In 2021, while still living in Iowa, I reconnected with a long-time friend and love. It wasn’t long before we decided that I would return home to Sacramento, California. My concern with returning to California was the cost of living. In the time I’d been away, the housing market had only skyrocketed. Along with that, gas prices were among the highest in the country. I talked with him about my concerns regarding the cost of living, especially since our plan was for me to live in my own place until we decided for sure that we wanted to move forward with our relationship.

California was much more expensive than I thought. I found a rental home within a fifteen-minute drive from his house. For half the square footage of the townhome I’d just sold in Iowa, I paid more in rent than I had on my mortgage. Added to this were the five-plus-dollar-a-gallon gas price and the climbing inflation. I was not able to continue to make a six-figure salary. I’d started a consulting business, but when that didn’t yield as much work as I thought, I began to adjunct teach at two different institutions. Along with my increased service-connected disability, I was making four thousand a month.

Six months after I returned home to Sacramento, he broke up with me. Initially I tried to salvage the relationship, especially since we had been friends for over thirty years. We continued in limbo for another year. During this time, I began to slowly take on debt. As time went on, it became larger. I attempted to reach out to agencies, but even with a service-connected disability, the only way I could receive rental assistance was to be behind on my rent.

After my divorce in 2006, I worked very hard to get my credit score over 800. Allowing my rent to get behind, thereby damaging my credit, was something I wasn’t willing to do. Then I attempted to apply for food stamps. After a month-long wait for my phone appointment, the day before, I lost my cell phone. The only way to replace it was to go through the insurance, which took over twenty-four hours. This meant I missed my appointment. Although I called the next day informing them of what happened, weeks later, I received a letter stating I was denied due to missing my appointment.

In the meantime, I made the painful decision to walk away from my long-time friendship and love. I could not pretend not to hurt as he held onto me while romantically moving on with another. Unlike the help he’d promised, I was left on my own. In the three years I lived near him, I racked up $35,000 in credit card debt between my business and my regular credit cards.

I recently earned a state contract in Los Angeles one day a week. I teach creative writing and storytelling at a state institution for forty dollars an hour. When I account for my flight, the Uber to and from the airport, and my rental car, if I get a room, I will actually lose money. Therefore, I sleep in my rental car. Every Monday night after I leave the car rental place, I drive to the community where I will work the next day. I find a quiet “safe” place to park, crawl into the back seat or the back cargo area, or recline the driver’s seat, and put on an eye mask. In the morning, I get up, drive to the gym, do a short workout and take a shower.

Despite my best efforts, I am experiencing situational homelessness. It is not as severe as the experiences from my childhood, but when you’re trying to sleep in a parking lot, listening to the street sweeper, wondering if you’ve locked the doors, feeling the chill of the air invade the car despite your clothing and blankets, it feels significant. It feels like failure. When you wake up in the middle of the night and there’s nowhere to go to the bathroom, you begin to understand why numbing out is preferable to the choices you must make. How did my life come to this? Like many, I’ve worked hard all of my life. I’ve defied odds and overcome barriers. Yet, I find myself sleeping in a car.

Quitting the contract with the state would be a detriment to my business. Successfully completing this contract could open the door to other more lucrative contracts in the future. Even if keeping it means continuing to subject myself to situational homelessness and the humiliation that comes with it.

The United States is experiencing a second great divide between the haves and have-nots. Like the Gilded Age, it doesn’t take much for anyone to find themselves on the losing end of life. In my case, I loved and trusted someone. In other cases, people make a mistake, get sick, lose a partner, get into an accident or simply lose their jobs. Whatever it is, it doesn’t take much to find yourself homeless in the richest country in the world.