My parents and I used to live in the suburbs. My father had drug issues and my parents divorced. When my father left my mother couldn’t afford the rent on our house. We basically bounced around for a while. We applied for Section 8 and were told there was a five year wait. When I was about ten years old we moved into a shelter. It was difficult because we lived in an affluent community but there was a shelter. I got teased for being homeless. I didn’t want to go to school and I did stop going for a few months. Because the shelter was made for single men and we were a family we weren’t allowed to interact with the other shelter guests. We had a curfew and specific times we had to leave in the morning. We had to stay in a ten foot by ten foot room. It was like we were in prison for being homeless. After a few years we got a Section 8 voucher which is about as good as nothing. A lot of landlords wouldn’t take our voucher. So I never had a stable home to live in throughout high school.
