Getting Housing Doesn’t Mean Never Being Homeless Again

A year ago when Irish and I were desperately trying not to be homeless anymore, all I could think of was how an apartment would change everything for us.

There would be electricity. We’d be warm. We’d have lights. We’d be able to keep electronics charged. We could use our microwave we hadn’t run in well over a year. We’d even be able to watch TV.

There would be running water. We could take showers more than once a week. We could use a toilet that flushed. We could wash our hands without heating up a pot of water on a camp stove. We could wash and rinse dishes in a sink, instead of in buckets.

We’d have a working refrigerator that kept food cold and a freezer to keep things frozen. We could buy food for more than a day or two and make large meals that stretched a few days.

There would be a laundry room in the building, if not a washer and dryer unit in the apartment. We wouldn’t have to wear one or two outfits a week and our clothes wouldn’t be lost to mold.

Building security meant we’d be able to sleep at night without worrying about our safety or being woken by a knock on our door.

When we were finally approved to move into our apartment, a weight that had been crushing us fell off our shoulders. I’d been stretching myself to “beyond thin” limits to work the hours needed to earn enough to save up for this apartment while also covering the expenses of homelessness. Once the last of our things were out of the rental van and in the apartment, I felt relief wash over me.

It lasted for about five minutes.

Then something a friend had said to me came true: “You’re busting your ass right now to be able to move into a place, and then you’re going to be hustling to keep it.”

Scraping By

I’d barely qualified financially for an apartment that falls about $400 below the average rent cost for a one-bedroom apartment in our area.  What I hadn’t taken into account were taxes when you’re self-employed.

For my first year of being a freelancer, my earnings were so low that I didn’t have to pay taxes. During the second year, that changed.  However, I knew nothing about quarterly tax payments – I assumed I had to pay taxes in April. When tax day 2023 arrived, I was $1,500 short. I paid what I could, knowing I was already late for the first quarter of 2023, in addition to still owing for 2022.

State and federal taxes took 30% of my earnings, assuming I was current. Our living expenses (rent, utilities, internet, phones) took almost everything else. Each month I worked budgeting magic to have a $400 cushion in place by the end of the month because I wasn’t earning enough to pay the rent with one week’s pay.

Doing the math, it was impossible to get caught up on my 2022 taxes and get current for 2023. 

I looked into rental assistance for low-income households to see if there was anything available. Even a few hundred dollars a month would have helped us immensely, but I found nothing.

It was a precarious situation that could fall apart at any time. I knew I needed to either find better-paying freelancing work or get a part-time job to pay my taxes. Working 40 hours a week left me with little time to look for freelancing opportunities. Low-skilled part-time jobs I applied for rejected me because of my criminal history. Eventually, I paid my outstanding 2022 taxes by dipping into what I’d saved for 2023 taxes.

I got farther and farther behind the 8-ball financially.

Bad News

Seven months after moving into our apartment, I got bad news from my long-term client. A recent update of the Google search algorithm caused the client to lose 40% of the traffic to their websites overnight. All editors would have to cut back their hours while the client figured out how to recover.

I managed to pick up a client for some part-time financial writing to supplement my loss of income. But the hours with my first client continued to drop each week: 32, 24, and then 10.

Four weeks after the announcement of the reduced hours, the client terminated contracts with all but one editor. Even though I’d been with the client for two and a half years and had the most seniority on the editorial team, they chose to keep their newest editor.

There was a brief hope when I picked up a second client for editing work at a very good rate. But immediately after onboarding me, the client hit the “pause” button on the project and I have no idea when they’ll resume it.

Last month I earned just 16% of what my normal monthly earnings used to be. For two months I’ve paid our rent from savings – the savings that was supposed to go toward paying at least some of the taxes I’ll owe for 2023. Now I won’t be able to pay any.

Sorry, IRS. You’ll have to take your place in line behind my rent and utilities.

Worst Time to Need a Job

This is the worst job market in decades. I’ve applied for thirty jobs I’m absolutely qualified for with nothing to show other than a few system-generated emails letting me know I won’t be interviewed. I’ve reached out to companies directly to inquire about opportunities and I’ve networked in every way I can think of.

The day before Thanksgiving, I was in my kitchen, in tears. Two things had hit me and I couldn’t stop thinking about them:

• At this rate, my savings will run out at the end of our apartment lease and we won’t be able to renew it.
• We only made it off the street for one year.

Since the day we moved in, I never stopped being afraid that everything around me I was so grateful for could disappear in an instant. It never felt like we were out of the woods because I knew we had nothing stable to stand on as far as my work.

I can’t go through the experience of being homeless again. I simply don’t have it in me to survive it a second time.