Extremely Urgent: Only a few days remain.

Being this vulnerable publicly is one of the most difficult challenges I have ever faced. I am terrified, but I must fight for the safety and stability of my home. This apartment is the life I would be thriving in if my housing were secured; it is the space where I finally feel free to live as my authentic self. I am fighting to avoid losing my identity and my safety to homelessness after four decades of struggling to survive. I am desperate for help, and I cannot do this alone anymore.

The Situation

• I was laid off in June following a corporate transition. Despite submitting over 3,500 applications and undergoing four resume rewrites, I have been unable to secure full-time employment.
• My unemployment benefits were exhausted in November, leaving me unable to cover rent since. I was only able to secure some small gigs and one short temp job since then.
• I am currently awaiting the sheriff to schedule an eviction - which could happen any day.
• I owe approximately $10,000 in total; I have saved $2,000 from recent temporary work, leaving a critical gap of $8,000 that I must raise in a matter of days. I am piecing together every small amount I can. Small bits add up.
• In January, I finally secured a temporary job for tax season. They were willing to help me stay housed by making it a permanent job, but after my eviction stipulation period ended, and homelessness seemed imminent, they fired me. My boss told me, “I’m sorry you’re going through this, but your situation is just too extreme and we have to think of our other employees, so I have to let you go.”
• If even the nicest and most compassionate employers I’ve ever encountered refuse to have a homeless employee, how is any professional company going to hire a homeless person living in a tent in the woods with no car ?
• I have no family or close friends, just a handful of casual acquaintances after a lifetime of fighting to be free of abuse, and fighting for survival.
• I’ve tried all state, city, religious, and online resources. Most have no funding, and I’m not eligible for anything that currently does. I couldn’t even secure a high-interest tribal loan.

The Stakes

The consequences of displacement would be catastrophic and long-lasting:

Safety & Legal Protection: As a survivor of familial abuse and then domestic violence, I am enrolled in a protective program that helps hide me from the abusers. I will be disqualified from participating in this critical safety program once homeless.

Mental Health: I live with severe cPTSD resulting from the past abuse - almost all of which involved the violation of my private space and a complete lack of safety in my own home. This apartment is my first and only safe, private space—staying here is essential for my mental health and my ability to function.

Physical Health & Survival: The physical toll of this stress is severe; I currently weigh 94 lbs and am battling extreme chronic stress and chronic inflammation and several health issues due to that - my body is, effectively, starting to fall apart. For a person of my stature and health, literal survival without safe, stable, private housing is not a viable option.

Long-Term Consequences: An eviction alone will disqualify me from any kind of housing for a minimum of 5 to 10 years. Due to this multi-year struggle, my profile now disqualifies me from pretty much everything. Eviction, combined with only derogatory rental history, no references, a lack of a co-signer, poor credit from the financial instability, and my ballooning student loans that will decimate any debt-to-income ratio, losing this apartment would effectively end my chances of returning to a professional, normal, stable life. Once I lose this particular apartment, I will not be able to qualify for another home of any kind for about 10 years.

Why This Home Matters

This apartment represents the first and only time I have truly felt safe. It is where I healed, worked through trauma, and found a community where I didn’t feel like an outcast. It is where, because of this sense of safety, I discovered my passions, and began to thrive as my authentic self. Because my happy memories are cloaked in repressed trauma, recalling them is almost exclusively tied to physical objects and specific physical spaces, so losing this particular home and all of my belongings and memory items means losing the triggers I need to access my own history, identity, and happy, supportive memories.

After losing that job, I have no way to keep paying a storage unit, so I will also be losing every single possession I have spent a lifetime building. Every memory item, everything that represents me and the growth I’ve achieved. All I will be able to save are the necessary survival items that fit into a Kia Rio and can get to southern AZ, where I will have to go in order to be somewhere warm by the time winter comes. I also can’t pay for my car if I become homeless and have to leave, so that will get repossessed in 2-3 months. Then I will be in a tent, in the woods, with no transportation to get or store food, water, or medical. I will have no hard shelter or security of any kind.

I have worked since I was 16, through graduate school and beyond. In 2022, I finally reached a livable wage and began to thrive, only to be thrown back into poverty by layoffs. Despite the current crisis, I am, mentally and emotionally, the strongest I have ever been. With stable housing, I know I can contribute to the world and live the normal life I’ve been dreaming of.. Without it, it feels like my existence is being deleted.

The safety of being able to express and process the depth of those emotions in this home, and the comfort of the memories tied to this apartment, are what allowed me to overcome everything else I’ve been through, what allowed and helped me heal and grow. Those things, all embedded here in this apartment home, are the only reasons I’m functional right now. This apartment is my primary support system, no matter how weird that may come off to most others.

How You Can Help

Any support—whether a donation or sharing my story—would mean the world to me. Every contribution makes a difference in this final, urgent hour. Thank you for your kindness and for helping me keep my hope alive. Thank you for reading.

~ Callie