So I got evicted today.

There was a small part of me that knew it was coming, having been down this road many times before, just not in the last 12 years.  In the courtroom last week, and in the hallway today, listening to people trying to negotiate more time to move their lives and families, was a study in heartbreak. A cancer stricken man, hobbled by the disease and walking with a cane, and his wife, whose mother had just passed away.  A single mother, 3000 miles away from any family, with a seriously ill child, who had made plans to return to her home state, but not soon enough for her landlord.  A man whose financial situation had already deteriorated to bankruptcy, dashing between courtrooms.  And me, whose determination to handle my excessive debt in at least a somewhat honorable fashion (payment arrangements, 2nd job (I only broke even), clinical lab rat, market research, etc), did not pay off fast enough to keep the apartment I've had for nearly the last 8 years.

I am far from unusual.  According to a current study, California leads the nation in homelessness, especially children.  With one of the highest costs of living in the nation, no one that currently lives here is surprised.  The appalling lack of affordable housing for families, coupled with the exorbitant deposits for new rentals, both feed and exacerbate the issue of homelessness. Help doesn't always exist for the working class, which is a sad testament to our fundamental misunderstanding of the issues surrounding homelessness..  It is not a lack of ambition, or poor moral character, that makes for homeless families.  It is being priced out of the housing and rental markets, along with fairly serious employment instability, that contributes to a new class of homeless parents and children.

Before we found the place where we currently live, we lived in a residential motel not far from here.  I went to visit the motel today, just in case a return stay is in the cards.  Of course, it's more expensive than it used to be (It's been 8 years, after all), and we still have to check out for one night every 28 days, but there is a stove, a refrigerator, and a full bathroom, so we can make it livable until we can find someplace else to call home.  I found it very telling that the motel was almost full, and that there was only one one bedroom "suite" left.  The housing situation has become so terrible that a place meant for a temporary stopover has become a permanent residence for many, who for so many reasons can no longer qualify for a regular rental.

I suppose I am soon to be one of them.  With only until the end of next week before I have to deal with the embarrassment of a Sheriff's notice and an official lockout. I will likely have to move somewhere, anywhere as quickly as possible while finding somewhere for the rest of my belongings to go.  With no money (Remember?  I drove myself into crushing debt trying to keep this place.), and next to no time.  And based on the 30 odd cases I saw on the calendar today, I won't be alone.  We are a first world nation, and we still lack both the will, and the ability to solve this issue of housing that working men and women can afford without breaking themselves, or living an entire state away from their employment.  How unutterably sad.  For us.

ETA: A couple of friend suggested that I setup a GoFundMe to help with the sudden moving costs.  I realized they had a point, and so I did: gofundme.com/ff1dhc

Just one more thing, and then I will show myself out.

A few days ago, a friend of mine posted the following article, about British landlord evicting large families, and workers with certain types of jobs: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/oct/31/millionaire-landlords-fergus-judith-wilson-evicting-families

I remember my first thought being that American landlords and property owners would probably love to do this is they thought they could legally get away with it.  Then I saw this on my Facebook feed, in which a federal judge basically gutted the Federal ban on housing discrimination: 
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/04/3588462/federal-judge-guts-nationwide-ban-on-housing-discrimination/. I can almost see certain apartment owners and landlords seeing this as a way to not only get rid of any tenant they don't like for any reason or no reason, but also giving them a venue to arbitrarily deny housing to anyone they perceive as different, or other.

Nothing perpetuates homelessness like an eviction followed by not being able to get another place because you've been evicted.  The reason for the eviction doesn't matter.  It will be assumed that it was for non-payment, and will also be assumed that this was not a one-time thing (which in the vast majority of cases, it was) and you will be repeatedly denied housing.  We seem to have developed a habit of looking at financial difficulties as moral failings, rather than the temporary setbacks that they should be, which makes recovery from them take that much longer. A development I find particularly alarming is the proliferation of property management firms managing apartments in urban areas, who are masters of the impersonal screening in which they charge anywhere between $25 and $50 per adult to run a credit and background check in order to tell you that you won't be able to rent from an owner that had you been able to talk to them face to face, you would have been able to maybe explain any special circumstances, and possibly might have been able to work something out.  Despair is shelling out credit check fee, after screening fee, after whatever fee, searching for housing for a family, only to be repeatedly denied, even after you've told the owner/landlord/firm representative that you do have challenged credit, and exactly why.  That can cause a person to give up hope of ever finding decent housing for their families.  Clearly, this is not the perfect American scenario.

A successful society, to me, is one in which a person can house clothe, and feed their family by their own efforts without unnecessary struggle.  Key word in that sentence being "unnecessary".  There is no reason anyone should have to work two or more jobs to provide the basic necessities for their family, or themselves.  But this is the kind of society we are creating.  No matter how hard we work, we are always behind.  As much as we say that we expect people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, we revere to the point of worship, those that not only take away boots from as many people as they can,  as often as they can, they also love to play keep-away with replacement pairs.  The only thing that will be accomplished is the making of a permanent underclass that can never put together the hosing and employment needed to create the kind of neighborhoods and cities that we say we want, but are not willing to put the work into.

I am somewhat cheered, however, by several states votes in this past Tuesday's election, to raise the minimum wage.  Our voices are finally being heard on the issue that capitalism doesn't work if people don't have money to spend.  The only way to make sure people have money to spend, is to pay them a decent living wage.  The next obvious step is to make sure they have someplace to call home.  In an ideal world, there would be someone to meet them halfway, especially those that comprise the working class.

Like a lot of people, I have a recurring fantasy about winning one of the large lottery jackpots.  What I would do with the money, however, after set asides for tithes, paying off my own debts, and getting my own housing situation in order, is the purchase of properties for the creation of affordable housing for working class families.  The price of admission to these homes?  A job, and no serious or recent criminal history. And rather than locate a large number of these homes in one area, these homes would be scattered in many different areas and neighborhoods, in order to stop the bad habit we get into of isolating certain groups to certain neighborhoods based on nothing but perceived social class.  (For the record, how much money a person has says less about them, than how they conduct themselves, and how they regard those that clearly have less than they do.  Condescension in any form, for any reason, tells a person more about you than the person you believe you are superior to.  Something to think about.)  And the sheer number of ways in which this could be achieved are growing everyday.  There is the simple purchase and flip of homes for a reduced price to working families, or barring that, lease to own options.  There is also a tiny house movement that has been going on for several years now: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/21/tiny-houses-aim-help-homeless/14411661/ ,  that seeks to provide people with smaller, affordable homes.  Along with the solutions proposed in my last post, there are so many ways to approach the issue of homeless families, and all we lack is the will to follow up on them on the type of scale that would completely eliminate homelessness for all but the most hardened of cases.

We Americans are known the world over for being able to do anything we put our minds to.  If only we would put our minds to helping each other, oh the problems we could solve.  Hopefully.  One day...