Stephanie, I am so sad to hear about that Missoula is trying to pass a bill to criminalize homelessness. It's such a wrong-minded policy. As a single mom I parented under the poverty line, as you did. At 61 years old I spent 7 months living in a relative's home, while looking for affordable housing, after becoming unhoused when my landlord's sold my rental. Thank you for all you do Stephanie. Much respect.
I can fully relate to that. I retired in 2019 and lucked out getting pandemic unemployment the following your and that supplemented my SS so I could afford my apartment. My daughter now pays half my rent and I am on the wait list for senior housing. Hang in, you are not alone in this.
Yes, we need more cash payments in the form of UBI or Child Tax Credits that don't have income requirements and so forth. Simple and direct like some of the covid legislation was.
Time scarcity is one of the major factors in food insecurity. There's lots of food available pantries and food banks but getting to it is extremely costly in time. There's a stigma factor as well.
Yes, David Roberts, like the covid legislation. There would be less food bank stigma if food banks actually gave out decent food. Not all food banks do. And then there is the wait time at a food bank, the paperwork to qualify at some food banks and a host of other issues.
As a social worker I found that many clients could not access child tax credits until they surmounted various obstacles to submitting their tax returns. You are so right that those credits were transformative in the lives of children and their families.
Your explanation does justice to the issues so many don't grasp. Whether the Missoula city council will comprehend the senselessness of criminalizing poverty and homelessness will be the test of their humanity.
Sending the message to city council members is a simple process for those willing to take a few moments to weigh in. Thanks for offering that option and making it easy!
Flawed humanity at best. They'd only grasp the import of their decision if they were placed in the shoes of those they're going to criminalize...for not having a home. The absurdity is mind boggling! Time for voters to stand up.
This is what infuriates me about red State poticians opposing things like Medicare expansion. Jese it's like they have no clue. Not clue one!! You make so many excellent points. Many have no idea what it's like to get in and out of a laundromat or doctors office with a child while in poverty. They don't care to know and that's the worst part. We are free to live under any bridge we choose, isn't that just great. F*CK those people.
Oh, they have a clue. They have all the clues. They just don't care. Their only priority is shoveling more corporate welfare to the poverty pimps in their hobo states.
We do vote. Republican gerrymandering makes voting much less effective than it should be. There are solutions to this too but too far off topic for a comment.
An eye opening essay. I appreciate all you are doing to educate people. I didn't realize that Missoula was making things so hard for homeless people. I will keep watching for ways I can influence a different approach.
In Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, they have almost 0% homelessness because they put the homeless in empty apartments within days of applying. The government found it cheaper to pay rent for people while they got back on their feet instead of paying for the cleanup, the policing, the healthcare and the other community services needed to help the homeless. These people found jobs and started paying their taxes and fines.
Unfortunately, in America the cruelty is the point. They don’t want to lift people up, they want them desperate enough to let the oligarchs exploit them.
Seriously! I’m about to be put on the street and it makes no sense. Why can’t they help me since I’m already here, housed. If I live on the street, my job won’t last, I won’t easily get housing. It’s messed up.
Americans also don't have guaranteed paid parental leave like most countries for having babies or adopting. Babies need their parents, there are studies about this.
Thank you so much for this important information and for your vulnerability in sharing, Stephanie. I can only imagine how triggering it might be for you to revisit these painful memories. - Your essay brings up so many uncomfortable and also important truths. Those precious faces of your beautiful children! They call us to action, and I’m responding to that call. Thank you again.
Nothing like criminalizing poverty. The non-stop paperwork and constant checking in actually cost the state more than the money or service you were seeking..The Republicans (thank you Mr. Reagan) and their mythical Welfare Queens plus Bill Clinton’s reworking of the work requirements meant you are “working” for assistance. All of it is to create a punitive system so you’ll pull yourself up by your boot-straps. (As if you could afford the damn boots.)
My sister-in-law lived alone in Houston and her only income was a small Social Security check. She was eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. She spent hours gathering up all the necessary documents and had to make 2 long trips by bus. She got her health coverage but they warned her if she didn’t follow a bunch of nonsensical rules she would lose the coverage. She lived in fear that she’d accidentally do something wrong.
About that time her car which was pretty old decided to die. Since it was very hard to get public transportation, she wanted to use her small savings to buy a cheap replacement. My son was able to help her buy a simple older car from the dealership he worked at. Because she was so afraid of losing her benefits, she went to report her used car purchase plus she had to take her bank statements in to prove she was poor. A snotty clerk was rude to her and insisted that she sell her car. She refused because at 75 she wasn’t healthy enough to walk or take the bus to church, the grocery store or her doctor. The clerk grunted ok and Sandra waited for several minutes for her to come back and tell her about her benefits. She got to keep her Medicaid but her SNAP (aka food stamps) was reduced to $18 a month. $18 wouldn’t cover much beyond milk and bread.
Texas is so generous. Plus she still had to go in once a month to prove she’s still poor.
We couldn’t let her starve so we offered to send her $400 a month for food, toilet paper, etc. She couldn’t deposit the check or she’d risk her health coverage. We ended up sending a check to her friend who cashed it and gave her the cash. Not on the up and up but neither is treating people like they are stealing money from Texas.
I wish you well and may life go smoother for you. Unfortunately, we live in the wealthiest country in the world but we waste money on everything but what we should be using it for.
So interesting to see the differences and (depressing) similarities between the US model and the UK version of a welfare state (from the perspective of my day job). The level of bureaucracy in the US (and the waste that implies) sounds pretty grim. On the other hand, we generate a lot of waste here through the resources we dedicate to trying to “catch people out”. On both sides of the Atlantic - too little support given begrudgingly by governments trying to reduce it even further and demonise the recipients.
Every time the state/federal governments spend millions on sniffing out “welfare fraud”, they always end up uncovering violations of tens of thousands of dollars - a 1% return on the investment. It would be so much cheaper to eliminate the means testing and bureaucracy and just issue UBI or some such. But of course, the GOP and the conservative neoliberal Democrats prefer the control the tedious, demeaning, frustrating process that the present system provides.
Fining people that have no money is Dickensian. A modern term of reference might be, "stupid."
I don't think one has to have experienced poverty to know that. But one does have to rise above posturing, draw upon a modicum of intelligence and splash of personal integrity to aim for something meaningful over a show of "action."
I live in a very different country (for all that so many south of the border do not understand that). Our social safety net is remarkable: both prevalent, with significant variance across the country, and inadequate to the growing task. But there seems to be a consensus that the primary obstacle to moving from extreme poverty is lack of housing. (It's strange that identifying "homelessness" doesn't seem to communicate that right off the top.)
Solutions remain elusive and are complicated by the very particular social histories of North American jurisdictions. In Canada, I fear that the social impact of poverty and homelessness is driving us toward a more US style reaction, in part because the solutions require bridging responsibilities spread across three levels of government set in stone at a very different time. Getting out the chisels to redress that seems impossible. So, municipalities deal with a harsh reality on the ground, dependent upon poorly targeted largesse that is never enough, from other levels of government that do not directly experience the problem but make hay pointing to it all the time.
Is this similar in Missoula? Is there scope for determining the civic cost of homelessness (crime, health, social services, etc.) and transitioning portions of that to preventative measures such as some form of housing?
Locally, the City is buying old hotels and housing people based on the idea that costs are offset by savings derived from a housed population. It's a model proven elsewhere, but of limited success here due to inability to deal with others aspects of lived reality for the poor: vulnerability to those who see opportunity to exploit the powerless. Drug dependency, thievery needed to support it, violence arising through desperation, fear, anger and the resultant slow grind of bureaucratic "justice" in which process is paramount and improved outcomes long gone.
Also true is that "the homeless" is more a label than a description. In one of the most enviable climates in the country, our supply of those seeking survival never ends. Our homeless population includes people who have fallen through the cracks, once like everyone else and suddenly without money for rent. Others are the chronically addicted. Still others, in that most temperate climate in the country, are people who like the freedom they associate with living rough on the street. Seasonally, young folks, but not only these. And the criminal exploiters. All suitably labeled, a one-size-fits-all mindset creates further problems in housing them together. It's an obvious recipe for disaster, spurring growth of services that ostensibly exist to provide solutions but grow staff and budgets dependent upon never succeeding. In my view, seeing the person and providing support that fits a personal context is critical. Drop the labels and meet "Mary/Joe."
I worry in Canada that our genuine desire to be offer respect and care to fellow humans is codified into systems that enable the problems they should solve. Observing from afar, I think that may be true of the States, as well.
It is hard not to be hopeless. Lack of hope itself drives the cycle of poverty. I can imagine the smurk of satisfaction in knowing that if fined in Missoula, there's no fixed address for delivery.
In the US, homelessness is understood, legally, as being a status, and the Supreme Court (prior to its current nightmarish bastardized incarnation) consistently found that criminalization of status to be universally unconstitutional.
Of course, municipalities don't let the inevitability of a class action stop them; they pass unenforceable statutes infringing on most of the constitutional rights of the unhoused with brazen impunity on the regular.
The Republican operatives that have seized control of the Supreme Court have, unsurprisingly, made short work of forty or sixty years of precedent, and now it is constitutional to criminalize status.
I just had a conversation with DHS here in Chicago in which I found out why my food stamp allotment had been cut from $83/month to $23. Turns out that this happened because I had stopped going to group therapy at Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, which we call C4. I am in a program for survivors of rape and incest. I dropped out of that group because the woman who runs it and I had a personality conflict. I really tried to like her but I just couldn’t. I never saw a bill from them; it was taken care of by Medicaid. So basically, it wasn’t an out of pocket expense. So when DHS took away that $63 worth of food assistance, they made it necessary for me to actually need to take more money out of pocket for food. Consequently, every month I come very close to running out of money. I’m sorry to say that when this parrot at DHS told me I could get some of the food assistance back by having more doctor bills(huh?). I yelled at her that $36/month was enough for a case of dog food. Then I cursed at her and hung up the phone. When I paid over $1100/month in market rate rent I got $249/month. When I got “affordable” housing at $439/month the fs were reduced to $83. So my new apartment is about a third of the size of the other one. This is okay because I’m old and not well. But I had to downsize so much that I’ve made myself lame picking up and moving around boxes that I have not yet been able to fully unpack after being here for ten months. I still need more economical storage solutions, which I cannot afford all at once. I hear only too well what you said about forms and reviews. Add to that situation the reality that I don’t feel well a lot of the time, and you arrive at the situation where all of this adds to my burdens of old age and poor health. Sometimes it’s hard to go on, so I write in Substack, I guess.
Almost going homeless with 4 small children was what sent me back to an abusive relationship. At that time, there had just been stories on the news about how the homeless shelters were full.
That first time I kicked my ex out, he went to the VA and was able to get on their housing assistance. When I went back to him, we got added to his housing assistance and qualified for a bigger apartment. After a year we moved into a house (only because I won $1000 in a radio contest thing and used it for the deposit). Of course, as soon as he had us back things went back to the same and worse. I assumed that if I kicked him out again, we would lose the housing assistance, so I asked a cousin for money to be able to go through classes and get a substitute teaching license. I had been working on a plan with my therapist to leave (or kick him out) - I was going to start subbing and stashing some money. Just before I was finished with the classes, he did some things that caused me to go file for a protective order. With 24 cents in our bank account.
Thank God there is a clause in the housing assistance that in situations of domestic violence the woman automatically receives housing assistance. Otherwise, we surely would have gone homeless before I was able to start substitute teaching.
I was actually never able to use the sub license (I did pay my cousin back) because I had kids who had a lot of issues with school and I spent a lot of time working with the school and teachers with the kids. I had been teaching part time online college classes the whole time, and still do. I had just gotten to the point where I was just barely able to make it each month (with SNAP and housing assistance) by picking up adjunct classes and hours in the writing center at the local community college when Covid happened.
We had food insecurity until benefits were extended during Covid - one of the only good things to come out of that. But, since those ended we are back to never having enough for the whole month. I felt pretty secure in my housing until last year the owner of the house we rent wanted to sell. Thankfully, he sold his other houses in our area (he moved out of state a few years ago). He said he can hang onto it for a bit, but of course that means every time something needs fixed I fear he will decide to sell. So, I don’t feel secure in housing. Between that, and we will have an inspection this week on Friday, which terrifies me! I’ve been in such a panic over it that I can’t function. I hate all of these hoops!
Stephanie, I am so sad to hear about that Missoula is trying to pass a bill to criminalize homelessness. It's such a wrong-minded policy. As a single mom I parented under the poverty line, as you did. At 61 years old I spent 7 months living in a relative's home, while looking for affordable housing, after becoming unhoused when my landlord's sold my rental. Thank you for all you do Stephanie. Much respect.
I can fully relate to that. I retired in 2019 and lucked out getting pandemic unemployment the following your and that supplemented my SS so I could afford my apartment. My daughter now pays half my rent and I am on the wait list for senior housing. Hang in, you are not alone in this.
You are a great mum, wishing you and your children a happy and joyful life
Thanks. My only child is now 35. She's means the world to me.,
Great essay.
Yes, we need more cash payments in the form of UBI or Child Tax Credits that don't have income requirements and so forth. Simple and direct like some of the covid legislation was.
Time scarcity is one of the major factors in food insecurity. There's lots of food available pantries and food banks but getting to it is extremely costly in time. There's a stigma factor as well.
Yes, David Roberts, like the covid legislation. There would be less food bank stigma if food banks actually gave out decent food. Not all food banks do. And then there is the wait time at a food bank, the paperwork to qualify at some food banks and a host of other issues.
As a social worker I found that many clients could not access child tax credits until they surmounted various obstacles to submitting their tax returns. You are so right that those credits were transformative in the lives of children and their families.
Your explanation does justice to the issues so many don't grasp. Whether the Missoula city council will comprehend the senselessness of criminalizing poverty and homelessness will be the test of their humanity.
Sending the message to city council members is a simple process for those willing to take a few moments to weigh in. Thanks for offering that option and making it easy!
they will fail if it's a simple test of their humanity. they already have or it wouldn't be a discussion at all.
now it's about how much the voters hate it and if people tell them they hate it.
Flawed humanity at best. They'd only grasp the import of their decision if they were placed in the shoes of those they're going to criminalize...for not having a home. The absurdity is mind boggling! Time for voters to stand up.
This is what infuriates me about red State poticians opposing things like Medicare expansion. Jese it's like they have no clue. Not clue one!! You make so many excellent points. Many have no idea what it's like to get in and out of a laundromat or doctors office with a child while in poverty. They don't care to know and that's the worst part. We are free to live under any bridge we choose, isn't that just great. F*CK those people.
Oh, they have a clue. They have all the clues. They just don't care. Their only priority is shoveling more corporate welfare to the poverty pimps in their hobo states.
🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
Child tax credit!! People: VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE PLEASE!!!!!!!
We do vote. Republican gerrymandering makes voting much less effective than it should be. There are solutions to this too but too far off topic for a comment.
An eye opening essay. I appreciate all you are doing to educate people. I didn't realize that Missoula was making things so hard for homeless people. I will keep watching for ways I can influence a different approach.
In Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, they have almost 0% homelessness because they put the homeless in empty apartments within days of applying. The government found it cheaper to pay rent for people while they got back on their feet instead of paying for the cleanup, the policing, the healthcare and the other community services needed to help the homeless. These people found jobs and started paying their taxes and fines.
This is inspiring to learn about!
Unfortunately, in America the cruelty is the point. They don’t want to lift people up, they want them desperate enough to let the oligarchs exploit them.
Seriously! I’m about to be put on the street and it makes no sense. Why can’t they help me since I’m already here, housed. If I live on the street, my job won’t last, I won’t easily get housing. It’s messed up.
Americans also don't have guaranteed paid parental leave like most countries for having babies or adopting. Babies need their parents, there are studies about this.
Also, if you leave a kid unsupervised, you will go to jail.
Income transfers work. Thank you for calling out the need for time, tampons, and cleaning supplies.
Thank you so much for this important information and for your vulnerability in sharing, Stephanie. I can only imagine how triggering it might be for you to revisit these painful memories. - Your essay brings up so many uncomfortable and also important truths. Those precious faces of your beautiful children! They call us to action, and I’m responding to that call. Thank you again.
Nothing like criminalizing poverty. The non-stop paperwork and constant checking in actually cost the state more than the money or service you were seeking..The Republicans (thank you Mr. Reagan) and their mythical Welfare Queens plus Bill Clinton’s reworking of the work requirements meant you are “working” for assistance. All of it is to create a punitive system so you’ll pull yourself up by your boot-straps. (As if you could afford the damn boots.)
My sister-in-law lived alone in Houston and her only income was a small Social Security check. She was eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. She spent hours gathering up all the necessary documents and had to make 2 long trips by bus. She got her health coverage but they warned her if she didn’t follow a bunch of nonsensical rules she would lose the coverage. She lived in fear that she’d accidentally do something wrong.
About that time her car which was pretty old decided to die. Since it was very hard to get public transportation, she wanted to use her small savings to buy a cheap replacement. My son was able to help her buy a simple older car from the dealership he worked at. Because she was so afraid of losing her benefits, she went to report her used car purchase plus she had to take her bank statements in to prove she was poor. A snotty clerk was rude to her and insisted that she sell her car. She refused because at 75 she wasn’t healthy enough to walk or take the bus to church, the grocery store or her doctor. The clerk grunted ok and Sandra waited for several minutes for her to come back and tell her about her benefits. She got to keep her Medicaid but her SNAP (aka food stamps) was reduced to $18 a month. $18 wouldn’t cover much beyond milk and bread.
Texas is so generous. Plus she still had to go in once a month to prove she’s still poor.
We couldn’t let her starve so we offered to send her $400 a month for food, toilet paper, etc. She couldn’t deposit the check or she’d risk her health coverage. We ended up sending a check to her friend who cashed it and gave her the cash. Not on the up and up but neither is treating people like they are stealing money from Texas.
I wish you well and may life go smoother for you. Unfortunately, we live in the wealthiest country in the world but we waste money on everything but what we should be using it for.
So interesting to see the differences and (depressing) similarities between the US model and the UK version of a welfare state (from the perspective of my day job). The level of bureaucracy in the US (and the waste that implies) sounds pretty grim. On the other hand, we generate a lot of waste here through the resources we dedicate to trying to “catch people out”. On both sides of the Atlantic - too little support given begrudgingly by governments trying to reduce it even further and demonise the recipients.
Every time the state/federal governments spend millions on sniffing out “welfare fraud”, they always end up uncovering violations of tens of thousands of dollars - a 1% return on the investment. It would be so much cheaper to eliminate the means testing and bureaucracy and just issue UBI or some such. But of course, the GOP and the conservative neoliberal Democrats prefer the control the tedious, demeaning, frustrating process that the present system provides.
You have such a voice in writing. Excellent piece.
Fining people that have no money is Dickensian. A modern term of reference might be, "stupid."
I don't think one has to have experienced poverty to know that. But one does have to rise above posturing, draw upon a modicum of intelligence and splash of personal integrity to aim for something meaningful over a show of "action."
I live in a very different country (for all that so many south of the border do not understand that). Our social safety net is remarkable: both prevalent, with significant variance across the country, and inadequate to the growing task. But there seems to be a consensus that the primary obstacle to moving from extreme poverty is lack of housing. (It's strange that identifying "homelessness" doesn't seem to communicate that right off the top.)
Solutions remain elusive and are complicated by the very particular social histories of North American jurisdictions. In Canada, I fear that the social impact of poverty and homelessness is driving us toward a more US style reaction, in part because the solutions require bridging responsibilities spread across three levels of government set in stone at a very different time. Getting out the chisels to redress that seems impossible. So, municipalities deal with a harsh reality on the ground, dependent upon poorly targeted largesse that is never enough, from other levels of government that do not directly experience the problem but make hay pointing to it all the time.
Is this similar in Missoula? Is there scope for determining the civic cost of homelessness (crime, health, social services, etc.) and transitioning portions of that to preventative measures such as some form of housing?
Locally, the City is buying old hotels and housing people based on the idea that costs are offset by savings derived from a housed population. It's a model proven elsewhere, but of limited success here due to inability to deal with others aspects of lived reality for the poor: vulnerability to those who see opportunity to exploit the powerless. Drug dependency, thievery needed to support it, violence arising through desperation, fear, anger and the resultant slow grind of bureaucratic "justice" in which process is paramount and improved outcomes long gone.
Also true is that "the homeless" is more a label than a description. In one of the most enviable climates in the country, our supply of those seeking survival never ends. Our homeless population includes people who have fallen through the cracks, once like everyone else and suddenly without money for rent. Others are the chronically addicted. Still others, in that most temperate climate in the country, are people who like the freedom they associate with living rough on the street. Seasonally, young folks, but not only these. And the criminal exploiters. All suitably labeled, a one-size-fits-all mindset creates further problems in housing them together. It's an obvious recipe for disaster, spurring growth of services that ostensibly exist to provide solutions but grow staff and budgets dependent upon never succeeding. In my view, seeing the person and providing support that fits a personal context is critical. Drop the labels and meet "Mary/Joe."
I worry in Canada that our genuine desire to be offer respect and care to fellow humans is codified into systems that enable the problems they should solve. Observing from afar, I think that may be true of the States, as well.
It is hard not to be hopeless. Lack of hope itself drives the cycle of poverty. I can imagine the smurk of satisfaction in knowing that if fined in Missoula, there's no fixed address for delivery.
In the US, homelessness is understood, legally, as being a status, and the Supreme Court (prior to its current nightmarish bastardized incarnation) consistently found that criminalization of status to be universally unconstitutional.
Of course, municipalities don't let the inevitability of a class action stop them; they pass unenforceable statutes infringing on most of the constitutional rights of the unhoused with brazen impunity on the regular.
...WELP.
The Republican operatives that have seized control of the Supreme Court have, unsurprisingly, made short work of forty or sixty years of precedent, and now it is constitutional to criminalize status.
If you have to litigate to get justice, it's already too late to get justice.
I just had a conversation with DHS here in Chicago in which I found out why my food stamp allotment had been cut from $83/month to $23. Turns out that this happened because I had stopped going to group therapy at Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, which we call C4. I am in a program for survivors of rape and incest. I dropped out of that group because the woman who runs it and I had a personality conflict. I really tried to like her but I just couldn’t. I never saw a bill from them; it was taken care of by Medicaid. So basically, it wasn’t an out of pocket expense. So when DHS took away that $63 worth of food assistance, they made it necessary for me to actually need to take more money out of pocket for food. Consequently, every month I come very close to running out of money. I’m sorry to say that when this parrot at DHS told me I could get some of the food assistance back by having more doctor bills(huh?). I yelled at her that $36/month was enough for a case of dog food. Then I cursed at her and hung up the phone. When I paid over $1100/month in market rate rent I got $249/month. When I got “affordable” housing at $439/month the fs were reduced to $83. So my new apartment is about a third of the size of the other one. This is okay because I’m old and not well. But I had to downsize so much that I’ve made myself lame picking up and moving around boxes that I have not yet been able to fully unpack after being here for ten months. I still need more economical storage solutions, which I cannot afford all at once. I hear only too well what you said about forms and reviews. Add to that situation the reality that I don’t feel well a lot of the time, and you arrive at the situation where all of this adds to my burdens of old age and poor health. Sometimes it’s hard to go on, so I write in Substack, I guess.
Almost going homeless with 4 small children was what sent me back to an abusive relationship. At that time, there had just been stories on the news about how the homeless shelters were full.
That first time I kicked my ex out, he went to the VA and was able to get on their housing assistance. When I went back to him, we got added to his housing assistance and qualified for a bigger apartment. After a year we moved into a house (only because I won $1000 in a radio contest thing and used it for the deposit). Of course, as soon as he had us back things went back to the same and worse. I assumed that if I kicked him out again, we would lose the housing assistance, so I asked a cousin for money to be able to go through classes and get a substitute teaching license. I had been working on a plan with my therapist to leave (or kick him out) - I was going to start subbing and stashing some money. Just before I was finished with the classes, he did some things that caused me to go file for a protective order. With 24 cents in our bank account.
Thank God there is a clause in the housing assistance that in situations of domestic violence the woman automatically receives housing assistance. Otherwise, we surely would have gone homeless before I was able to start substitute teaching.
I was actually never able to use the sub license (I did pay my cousin back) because I had kids who had a lot of issues with school and I spent a lot of time working with the school and teachers with the kids. I had been teaching part time online college classes the whole time, and still do. I had just gotten to the point where I was just barely able to make it each month (with SNAP and housing assistance) by picking up adjunct classes and hours in the writing center at the local community college when Covid happened.
We had food insecurity until benefits were extended during Covid - one of the only good things to come out of that. But, since those ended we are back to never having enough for the whole month. I felt pretty secure in my housing until last year the owner of the house we rent wanted to sell. Thankfully, he sold his other houses in our area (he moved out of state a few years ago). He said he can hang onto it for a bit, but of course that means every time something needs fixed I fear he will decide to sell. So, I don’t feel secure in housing. Between that, and we will have an inspection this week on Friday, which terrifies me! I’ve been in such a panic over it that I can’t function. I hate all of these hoops!