Darlene S. has faced challenges in housing her entire life, but things have gotten progressively harder in recent years. After experiencing two evictions, the most recent being a decade ago, she has faced mounting barriers to housing. Combined with increased rents and requirements of 3 times rent in income, renting anything became impossible. Darlene has now been unhoused since 2013.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019ve been evicted, if you owe back rent, you can\u2019t pay that off while you\u2019re simultaneously trying to come up with deposits and rent for a new place. Most people don\u2019t have the bandwidth to do that, so that leaves you, nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is thankful that she has always managed to find a place to land, either couch surfing with friends, doing in-home care that included a place to stay, or at a shelter. Currently staying at a women\u2019s shelter in Springfield, MO, the shelter environment is only adding to her stress:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI call it Groundhog Day<\/em>. Every day you wake up exhausted to start the day off. Sleeping on a cot is definitely not the best rest I\u2019ve ever had. Then most of us don\u2019t have cars, so we wait for the bus to find a place to be all day with all of our stuff. It marks you, it tags you as homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Darlene is a member of Springfield Tenants Unite, working to fight for affordable housing and tenants rights in the Springfield area. Between the shelter where she is staying and her work with STUN, she\u2019s talked to so many people facing different housing challenges – rising rents, landlords who refuse to maintain the home, or an inability to meet the income requirements of three times the monthly rent at most units. But she knows they\u2019re all a part of the same problem – a lack of affordable housing. And while she\u2019s happy to see places where her hometown is improving and developing, she doesn\u2019t hold out much hope that new developments will include enough affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a hard thing to watch, we want to see it improve, but when new housing is developed, it\u2019s too costly for the working class, elderly or disabled. There\u2019s a lot of people in my world that are in the same boat. If they had a place they could rent for $300-500 every month, they could handle that, but they can\u2019t do $600 or $900. And that\u2019s where we\u2019re at, there just isn\u2019t anything available that we can afford.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Darlene still has hope for solutions to the affordable housing crisis – and improvements in her own situation. But creating more income based, low\/no barrier housing is the first step, both for the community, and for herself. Staying in a shelter, or even having to move every year to afford rent, affects so much of your life. It can affect your ability to hold a job, your access to transportation, your ability to seek healthcare. She hopes to go back to school and finish her degree, but before she can commit to that, she needs stable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m looking for something that would allow me to exist<\/strong> without all my income going to rent.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Darlene S. has faced challenges in housing her entire life, but things have gotten progressively harder in recent years. After experiencing two evictions, the most recent being a decade ago, she has faced mounting barriers to housing. Combined with increased rents and requirements of 3 times rent in income, renting anything became impossible. Darlene has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":10369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,43],"tags":[205,27,62,59,544,543],"issues":[11],"coauthors":[447],"class_list":["post-10368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","category-weekly-perspective","tag-affordable-housing","tag-affordable-housing-and-homelessness","tag-missouri","tag-poverty","tag-tenant","tag-tenant-story","issues-affordable-housing-and-homelessness"],"yoast_head":"\n