A Tough Decision
At the end of March 2016, we had a choice to make. A decision to trust in the system and a mistake that led my family of six and our dog to have to live in our 1997 Chevy Suburban for months.
My trusty steed
For the two years prior, we lived in HUD subsidised housing in a poor Lakewood, CO neighborhood. At the time, I was not working. If I had gone to work, we would have to pay more for our apartment and simultaneously lose a lot of what we were getting on food stamps. In addition, we would have to put our six year old into the school system and pay $600 a month for child care for our four year old. In other words, we would become even poorer unless I could make about $2500 a month. And I had no driver's license because of an unresolved child support issue.
Denver has no skilled labor jobs that pay that much and thier professional licensing system is in urgent need of an overhaul. I have skills, I am a great builder and a first class mechanic. I have management training as well. I have difficulty following, so my best bet would be entrepenurship. However, like I said, the licensing and insurance regulations require you to have quite a lot of money to get into business, and if you get caught without the right paperwork, the fines are stiff.
Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place
We knew we had only a few months to figure it all out. I looked every day for employment that was sufficient and a place for us to live that would be affordable. The Denver metro area is no longer an affordable place to live unless you are a college educated professional or you decide your family can do without you and you take multiple jobs. The influx of people to Denver is astounding. I think it is the legal marijuana. Because of this, apartments and rental houses are renting for outrageous prices, pushing the low paid people to move out or kill themselves to get the money to live on. Anyway, I had to figure out a way for us to survive. My wife was driving a school bus and was gone 12 hours a day. I was looking for work and doing some low paying labor jobs when I could find them on Craigslist. We knew that at the end of March, our subsidised housing was over, so we had to make a decision. Our social worker said not to worry, she would get us a voucher for a new place.
Too Cold To Camp Out
The end of March came fast upon us and we put our entire life into a storage unit and moved out of the apartment. We figured we would camp out, like we did three years prior when we got forclosed on. The problem with that plan became immediatly apparent when winter refused to lose its grip on Colorado. We had only a summer style tent and no real cold weather camping gear. The pay campgrounds were not open yet, but there is a lot of National Forest providing you don't stay in one spot for more than 14 days. But it was just too cold and we decided it would be best to stay in our car. It is big and we have travelled a lot in it and we figured it would do. So, for the first week, we stayed in a shopping center parking lot close to where my wife worked. We had to save gas because with a big suv comes big gas bills.(plus we had to run the car all night to have heat)
The littles
Every Form of Refuge Has a Price
At the beginning of week two, we got a heavy snow storm. It snowed all night and into the next day, dropping 6 inches of wet heavy snow. I had just heard that I would be starting a maintenance job at a hotel, so we celebrated a little and got a room at the motel across the street for two days. (I could not stay at the hotel I was going to work for, it was against policy, and I never told the manager I was homeless for fear of not being hired.) Two days was all we could spare.
The weather cleared up and the snow melted. It doesn't last long in early spring. I started my job and our 19 year old watched the smaller kids (the littles I call them)while I worked. My wife went to work at 6am and I worked 12pm to 8pm. We stayed in the Suburban for the rest of that week. We could use the facilities at the grocery store we were parked at and we mostly ate from there using our food stamps. Having to buy prepared food is twice as expensive and not good for you, but it keeps you from dying.
Week three looked a little more promising, weather wise and because I had a new source of income. The snow came in later that week, however and we found a shelter that let you camp there inside thier gym in cases of extreme weather. We camped there for two nights, then we were back at the grocery store for the weekend.
That weekend, a friend of my wife offered to let us stay for a few weeks while we gathered what money we could. We did not plan on staying in Colorado, we had made the decision to move to South Carolina. We had heard nothing from the social worker about a voucher. The apartments were less expensive and so was the general cost of living. Plus, as my wife said, it would be better to live in a place with a milder winter if we found ourselves homeless again. I had lived in Myrtle Beach for two years in my youth and had loved it, but tragedy had made me move back to Connecticut (a story for another time).
Please stay tuned for Part Two coming soon.