#gonna put this in my jokey little couchsurfing tag just in case people are curious as to what happened to me lol

[schizononagesimus]

You know what I'm gonna add to this here instead of in the tags. I'm homeless. It's not my first time; I missed most of 4th grade because my mom is disabled and had just escaped an abusive boyfriend. We were mostly squatting then, because one of our friends owned some real estate and would leave the apartments unlocked for us when they were unoccupied.

I was kind of born into this. Seriously, I see why people think we're a "breed". Most homelessness is chronic, and a lot of people can't fathom why. But here's one scenario that might help explain that:

Your family is poor. Your family isn't exactly mentally well, either, so you mostly don't speak to each other; you have to make your own family and support networks.

You manage to go to a prestigious university on a scholarship once, and then manage to get student loans to get your Master's degree in a city far away from home. You work all throughout school, supporting yourself completely on your own.

You do groundbreaking research that becomes internationally renowned, earning you keynote talks, grants, journal publications.

Naturally, you apply for PhDs. And you get in! Without funding. And it's $40,000 a year without living costs. You can't take anymore student loans out- you've already hit the borrowing limit. Your family can't help you. During all of this, your job experiences a budget freeze, and has to slash their office staff by half. Suddenly, you have no job, no family to help with living expenses, and nothing lined up for... God, rent is due in 30 days.

You apply to jobs, but thirty days is never enough time to find anything, so you set up a GFM. It gets close to the goal, but is $300 off, so you take out an extra credit card to pay the last of your rent for that month.

You can't afford that rent again, it's just too difficult to swing in your situation, so you decide to move back to the city your undergrad was in, since you have friends there who you could stay with and more job opportunities. You reduce everything you own to two suitcases and get the cheapest flight out.

You sleep on your friend's sofa bed for a couple of weeks before a shitty retail job comes through for you. It doesn't matter what the job is, or that the money isn't enough, it's a job to at least keep you afloat for a little while while you look for other employment.

The problem? You have to save up money for an apartment. Housing is already scarce unless you know someone. Subletting a room is really your only option to have a place of your own, since you can't get a cosigner with good credit to back you up since your own credit tanked because you can't pay off the credit card debt you got into to prevent yourself from being suddenly homeless. You also don't have 3x the monthly rent in income, or a crazy savings account, or the money for a deposit. So you still have to sleep on your friend's sofa bed, even though you have a job.

You try to look for another job, but you're working so many hours that it's difficult to find the time. You work on your feet, so when you get home you just crash. The management at your job isn't good. In fact, it's so bad that someone in upper management regularly "takes advantage" of you being a minority. Disgusted, you tell your direct supervisor. The day after, you're fired.

Out of a job (and now in the middle of a pro bono lawsuit), your friends let you sleep on their sofa bed for a little while longer. You had spent most of your paychecks paying off debt so you could get an apartment, so you don't have much savings.

But eventually, your friends just need the space, plain and simple; they have other friends and family to take care of. You have to find somewhere else, and so you sleep on other friends' couches, and stay in hotels people put you up in, and stay with your partner when their roommate is gone, and try to set up a petsitting gig that might get you through one more month. Your friends introduce you to other people who might be able to help, too.

You try to apply to jobs. It's really hard to find the time to apply between changing houses and worrying about money, not to mention that you have to cross your fingers and hope they don't want an in person interview because you don't have the clothes for it. You're lucky you can use your alumni status for a private space to take an interview in at the library.

You want to apply to PhDs again, because if you get funding then that's it--this hell can end. But applying to PhDs was the hardest thing you ever did academically and by itself took every ounce of your time and energy--jobless and houseless, you simply don't have that right now. Hell, the only reason you're eating is because a friend made you leftovers. How are you supposed to apply to PhDs like this?

This is what happened to me.

I still have other unhoused people come up to me on the street and ask for money, and I have to tell them man, me too. And sometimes we get to talking about how the hell we ended up here. In my experience, it's mostly people like me- not a lot of family, a minority, an education of some kind, and one bad day.

Having degrees doesn't guarantee a job, and having a job doesn't guarantee housing. A lot of the reason people stay homeless is because you don't have the resources to get a job (interview clothes, a good internet connection, a place to take a call), the job market is a nightmare, they then need to save up for a house, the housing market is a nightmare, and then there's the problem of being hungry and needing healthcare (and in most states, you can't get government support on that without an address). Not to mention the issue with women's shelters generally being full up, and if they're not, you can only have a small locker of items with you... So say goodbye to most of your clothes and other items and have fun trying to buy those back if/when you get back on your feet. So basically, you're homeless because you don't have a job, and you don't have a job because you're homeless, and the cycle repeats. This is why homelessness is chronic.

This is why shit like tent cities happen, and that's not an option for me because my city has the cops sweep them out nightly. That's somebody's home (and God that tent cost a lot of money). Mostly my friends are just trying to keep me out of the shelter so I don't have to rebuild my entire life again, more so than I already have to.

I will say, I feel lucky that I've gotten the donations and other help I've gotten. The problem with being any minority is that your support system is most likely going to be people who are just at risk as you are. I'm also lucky I'm able to have healthcare, because straight up if I didn't I'd be dead without my medication.

This is just one example, and it's very different than what happened to my mom because of her disability--but that's her story to tell.

PS- in the US, there are four definitions of homeless, so please, if you hear "I'm couchsurfing" or "sleeping in my car," please hear HOMELESS. A lot of people are too ashamed to say it or just don't know that that's what they are because they have clean clothes and technically don't sleep outside.