How YOU Will End Up Homeless! SOON! REALLY!!

Your bills:

$1, 200. 00 / rent, one bedroom, not fancy.

$130 .00 / electrical

$375 .00 / car payment, high mileage, 11-year-old Altima.

$165 .00 / car insurance

So, let’s do the math:

You bring home about

$3,300.00 a month after taxes & your bills average about $1,800.00 (give or take).

You’re making it, but barely… This doesn’t even include groceries, internet, cable, cell phone, etc. so add about $1,200 for all of those (at a minimum!).

(nor does it include child tax credit, or child support).

Now, it’s a really cold December and you get a power bill for $600 .00 because you’ve had to be late on it… How do you pay that? To put it simply, you don’t. Because you can’t!

Hi all my name is Anna. This is my suicide note, I guess.

I lost my job and since then I’ve actually been looking. It hasn’t even been that long. The issue is that it has taken too long for me to get another job (I never had savings or made much money) and that’s it. Game over. I can’t picture myself clawing my way back once I lose my apartment. If I had another month to apply to jobs, it might have made the difference between life and death for me. I don’t have that, however.

I would be fine living in a car if I had one, but I don’t even have that.

I don’t really want to kill myself to be totally honest but it’s my only option at this point and it’s just a lot better choice than the alternative.

I’m losing my only place to live today, and I’ll be on the streets of Boston with no money and no future and not a soul who cares at all.

So, your power gets shut off… But you know what your lease says. It says you get evicted if your utilities are terminated. So now you’re in court crying to a judge who doesn’t care, & you have 10 days to get out. Well, you’re in luck, because you found somewhere with 3 days to spare, and it’s only $975.00 a month! Roaches, rats, criminals included.

But to get in, you must pass a background & credit check. Which you can’t because you just got evicted. You’ve never been a criminal, but even if you could pass it, you’re looking at $1950 to move in, after paying the application fee, deposit & first month’s rent.

Time’s up ….

Landlord shows up at 7am with the police & changed your locks. So, now you’re living in your car with your 7-year-old son & everything you need to get by. You tried to get a storage unit, but you don’t have a billing address, so they won’t sell one to you. So, you could only take what would fit in your backseat.

You pay to shower at local truck stops & eat whatever can be cooked in a gas station microwave. Someone sees you & your son living like this & calls C.P.S; guess what happens next? They remove your child from your care.

As if this isn’t devastating enough, you lose your job too. (Because “an employee losing their child reflects poorly on this company and you need to have an address!”)

So now, you apply for a subsidized apartment with the community help program where the waiting list is 3-7 years. Then you go into Wal-Mart to put in an application… When you get back to your car you see that your back window has been smashed & someone helped themselves to your belongings.

Remember that it is December & really cold. Now you have damage to your only shelter. You call your car insurance, who says your deductible is $1,000.00. ~ AND ~ they’re going to increase your monthly rate since you’re now “high risk”.

You call the homeless shelter as a last resort & all their beds are full. I’ll stop here Because I think you get the point. The people we work with everyday are these people… WE ARE THESE PEOPLE! We are all so close to homelessness & don’t even realize it.

All it takes is:

* One unexpected bill~

* One fender bender~

* One lay-off ~

* One house fire , etc…