Homelessness Beyond the Stigma: A True Story

Transparency… Authenticity… What is anything or anyone without these?

The thing about homelessness is that it makes people uncomfortable, no matter the angle from which you’re viewing it. Homelessness is so complex and involves so many uncomfortable topics that we just deem it something negative, like a bad omen or a disease you can catch if you look at or think about it for too long. Because of that, we forget that it’s real and that real human beings- children, the elderly, and disabled people- are experiencing it. These are people just like you, who have essential needs to survive and be healthy. They have opinions, desires, feelings, fears, and hobbies. They crave socialization and comfort. They have skills, memories, and capabilities. They speak and breathe just like you.

I’m one of them, and I know many more. I have a family. I have pets. I grocery shop and cook on a stove every day. I shower every day and do laundry. I garden and paint. I go to family events and on dates with my boyfriend; we watch movies and go out to eat. We live as normal a life as possible. Everything we have, even if it doesn’t seem like much to others, we worked for and got ourselves.

We started out living in a shipping container together. When we got caught and kicked out, we moved to a railroad line. That first night, we slept on the ground under a tarp together with no pillows or blankets. The next day, we built a structure using a ladder and two large railroad ties (wooden planks) from the railroad. Eventually, we built up to having a bed, bookshelves, a hardwood floor, and a fireplace. Thanks to COVID-19 and the stay-at-home order, this was our home for two years.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, Union Pacific Railroad came and gave us 30 minutes to save what we could before they bulldozed and discarded the rest. We saved what we could from what had been our home for two years, only to be left standing in the cold and rain with our belongings. There were no alternatives given for safe housing or shelter, not even a tent or a hotel voucher. The next day, I set up a tent, and we rebuilt again. Then we were moved by the city and rebuilt again, until I was finally able to get an old RV.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t until I began living in my RV that I learned how society really feels about homeless people, and how much of an "eyesore" I was considered to be. Trust me when I say I have plenty of reasons and stories to justify the fear I live with in the back of my mind, fear of the city coming to displace me every single day.

I’m getting off topic, though. The reason I sat down to write this is that I’m in tears, and this is a part of my reality that society doesn’t think about when they’re submitting 311 reports about a trailer they think is an eyesore in their neighborhood. They don’t think about the human inside who is a full-time student at Georgetown University with a 3.5 GPA, an active member in her community, a volunteer, and someone just doing her best to change the quality of her life. They don't see someone trying to hold it all together, someone who doesn’t bother anyone, who knows all her neighbors because she’s lived on this street since she was five years old. They don't see someone who cooks, cleans inside and outside, goes to community meetings, cares for six dogs, hustles, and balances homework and responsibilities. Someone who has applied to every low-income housing lottery that has opened its waitlist over the past three years. Someone who is dealing with a loved one close to her who has chronic health issues, while currently dealing with finals, feeling completely overwhelmed, and fearing what’s coming next.

It feels like only a matter of time before the city comes and tries to force me into a parking lot or an unhealthy environment and forces me to surrender my dogs, who I owe my sanity to and who have been with me throughout this entire journey. Or worse, they'll tow my non-operational RV and literally leave me on the sidewalk with my dogs, my belongings, and nowhere to go.

It doesn’t help that anyone can go on 311 and randomly report my RV and my boyfriend’s trailer, claiming they’re abandoned and being used to store drugs, and asking the city to tow them as soon as possible. The worst, most helpless feeling in the world is knowing there is nothing you can do about it, and that no one will care enough to say, "Hey, stop! This isn’t right."

However, that is my reality. This is me being transparent and honest, and it’s going to make people uncomfortable. People who care about me might feel embarrassed or advise me against sharing too much. People will judge me, justify not caring, twist my words, or even laugh, shake their heads, or feel bad for me. Some will say it’s my fault, make assumptions, or just tell me to "get a job."

I hope, however, that what others take away from my transparency is the realization that behind what you see, or pretend to see, are individuals just like you. Behind what you deem an eyesore is a person just like you. Behind the RVs, the tents, and everything that makes you uncomfortable are the everyday realities that regular society doesn’t talk about.

They don't talk about the unimaginable conditions disabled and mentally ill people live in, or the way young women are repeatedly assaulted and given more drugs than food until their minds are gone. They don't talk about the shortened lifespan of unhoused people, or the way the city comes and takes the little that people have, literally leaving them in the street with nothing. They ignore the degrading ways unhoused people have to handle basic human functions that others take for granted, like using the bathroom and showering. They ignore the fact that the only way to be left alone by the city or police is to sleep on the open sidewalk, because anyone in a tent will be displaced.

They ignore the criminalization of homelessness, the way minorities are forced into homelessness, and the policies in place to keep them there. They ignore the stigma that society defines you by, and the way it destroys your self-image.

When I said homelessness is complex, it’s because it goes deeper and deeper, affecting your mental health and getting the best of even the most grounded people. These are uncomfortable topics that no one talks about, not even people with lived experience, because of the trauma, the triggers, and the feeling that there’s nothing we can do about it.

If we talk about it and bring it to light, then we have to accept that it’s real and that it’s not okay.

But it is real. And it is not okay.

Society shouldn’t be allowed to just ignore our realities and render us invisible so they can live comfortably, especially when they are displacing us, taking the little we have, and withholding the basic necessities so many of us need. We were pushed into homelessness by low wages, outrageous rent prices, redlining, gentrification, and strict qualifications or restrictions for basic resources, pushed into an environment that causes addiction, mental illness, uninhabitable living conditions, and deep trauma. The government, policy decisions, and white America caused homelessness, lost control of it, and now refuse to face it.