Being homeless was the primary contributing factor extending my state of homelessness.
What do I mean by that? In a nutshell, society avoids homeless people like they’re the source of the plague. Banks don’t want to lend accounts to homeless people. Employers don’t want to hire homeless people. Landlords don’t want to rent to homeless people.
It’s also difficult to fake having an address. Because of this, homeless services are often the only realistic route out of homelessness. And if those services are not working quickly, effectively, or efficiently (an experience many homeless people can attest to), you remain homeless for factors beyond your control.
If you’re trying to hide your homelessness, using a homeless shelter’s address is the worst move you can make. Trying to open a checking account online often resulted in an automatic rejection when choosing a shelter address. My only choice was to continue using the address of the apartment I was evicted from.
Due mostly to a slumlord, there is massive emotional trauma attached to my former address. I avoid the block, the neighborhood and even the train route of this place I once lived. Yet on all my paperwork, when possible, I used that address for more than a year after becoming homeless. This meant I also carried the despair associated with the address for a very long time.
Attached to this address is 10 months of court filings, of tears and yelling and clenched fists.
Recollections of leaks, crumbling dry wall, stipulations, poor penmanship scribbling the same repairs are all associated with this address.
An indifferent judge un-phased by my sudden doubled rent, miscellaneous fees, quickly accumulating debt, and impending homelessness haunts my memories.
Worst of all? Using this address wasn’t even a good gamble. It was just a slightly better one.
Either way, the barriers to leave homelessness rise. The rejections continue to come. The landlord doesn’t want me almost as much as I don’t want them. But, I need them. No matter which address I scribble under my name, I still need them. I still need a place to live.
