There just aren't enough services to prevent homelessness

When I worked with people experiencing homelessness, I kept hearing about the obstacles to help. Then I experienced them myself.

Do you know who experiences homelessness in the United States? Often, it’s hard-working parents who give back to their communities — maybe people just like you.

I worked with people experiencing homelessness and helped women who were survivors of domestic violence. Then I experienced domestic violence myself and lost my own home. After that, I knew first-hand what it was like.

I’m a woman of faith and married an elder from my church. It came as a terrible shock when I suffered a severe injury from violence at his hands and had to take my children from a previous relationship and flee our home.

There weren’t safe openings in the shelters where my children and I could be together, so I sent them to be with their father while I tried to survive homelessness and get back on my feet.

I applied to my state’s crime victims compensation fund to help secure housing and reunite with my children, but this process took over two years. In the meantime, I had major surgery whose complications resulted in permanent disability and left me unable to sustain meaningful employment.

I was disabled, separated from my children, homeless, and in shock. Life wasn’t supposed to be this way.

When my victim’s compensation funds finally came through, I got my children and relocated us to another state where we would be safe. I was accepted into a leadership institute and began cooking meals for those in need. I started my own ministry. The leadership program even used my story to train social workers.

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) helped us through the hard times. With prayer and a modest safety net, I was back on track.

Then COVID-19 hit. The homeless shelter I cooked for closed down due to insufficient funds. SSDI mistakenly halted my payments due to a clerical error that would take months to sort out. My rent skyrocketed overnight. I quickly fell behind on rent and ended up back on the street.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the people I’ve ministered to — and my own bad luck: There are precious few services that help prevent homelessness. The obstacles to assistance when we need it are many. You must be destitute to receive help, and as soon as you begin to get back on your feet, that critical assistance can be pulled away.

Further, it’s more expensive to have assistance programs kick in after the tsunami and toss us a sponge for cleanup. We need to prevent the storm from happening in the first place. We aren’t homeless due to desire. Grave things have happened to us, most of them beyond our control.

If we are ill, we need health care. If our partners are abusing us or our children, we need assistance safely relocating. If our rent skyrockets, we need rental assistance and a Renters Tax Credit. If there isn’t enough affordable housing, we need to build it.

If we’re disabled or lose work, we need reliable and sufficient disability and unemployment insurance. And if our children are hungry, we need help putting food on the table.

None of this is as expensive as the huge tax breaks politicians give the wealthy or the over one trillion dollars a year spent largely to increase the profits of the defense industry. These are questions of priorities.

Ask yourself, if what happened to me happened to you or your loved one, what would you want?

Policies that ensure our safety, security, and prosperity. That’s what we all want. Together, we can demand it.

This blog post was originally published by OtherWords, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.