How evictions often lead to the loss of housing, safety, and security.
By Jocelyn Figueroa
Writer and Journalist
Introduction
The day I became homeless, I missed the sheriff by a few hours.
I was in my early 20s and in my last semester of college. Poor luck landed me in an apartment owned by a slumlord who retracted the lease renewal and doubled my rent overnight. He did everything he could to get me out—turning the heat and power off and even putting a hole in my living room wall. Months in housing court did nothing. The other side had an army of lawyers. It was a cruel system, especially to those with everything to lose. I didn’t have expensive lawyers or endless resources.
At the time, I didn’t know justice was something you could buy.
The eviction process in each state is different, but it’s generally a stressful and complicated weekslong legal process. I returned to court six times over eight months. In mediation sessions, we discussed apartment repairs and the power and heat shutoffs. Outside of court, my landlord used intimidation tactics to scare me. He often stood outside my building all day long. He had his eyes on my window that was visible from the street. Frightened, I hardly left my apartment.
During my eviction proceedings, I made endless calls and sent dozens of emails in search of assistance. I eventually found my way to New York City’s homeless prevention program, Homebase, where I learned I first had to be officially served an eviction notice before I could get any real help. I then had to register with the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), followed by a shelter intake process.
“I’m sorry you fell through the cracks,” said the judge overseeing my case. That day, I stood shoulder to shoulder in housing court with several other families awaiting eviction. There were so many of us, we were sitting on the floor and spilling out into the hallway. Many of us would soon join the more than 350,000 unhoused people in New York City.
When it was all said and done, I was ordered out of my home by noon on March 1, 2018. The judge told me that if I failed to comply with the timeline, I’d be escorted out of my home of four years by the sheriff and that I could even be arrested and go to jail. This was the last thing the judge said to me before she moved on to process the next eviction.
I left almost everything behind, including things that can’t be replaced, such as childhood mementos and a quilt my grandmother made for my 18th birthday. The few things I could take—mostly clothes and legal documents—fit into a single gym bag. It was the scariest day of my life, the repercussions of which I lived with for a long time. My physical and mental health suffered, and I lost any feeling of safety and security.
Data shows that evictions are inextricably linked to increases in sheltered homelessness. According to Yale’s Tobin Center for Economic Policy, people facing evictions often experience additional adversities, including job loss and declining health. Over time, it was also found that evictions reduce tenants’ earnings, impede access to credit, and that Black people and women are more likely “to face negative housing and employment outcomes following an eviction.”
Sadly, my devastating 2018 eviction did not make me an outlier. More than 2 million U.S. households have an eviction case filed against them each year.
Ugly Part of the World
Like many people who are evicted, my initial obstacle was that I had nowhere to go and no money for new housing. I didn’t have anyone else I could stay with, and I had no funds to get a motel. No one was going to come to my rescue.
Everything I believed about the world and about justice crumbled after my eviction. Now that pandemic renter protection programs have expired, low-income people nationwide are experiencing unjust and unlawful evictions at an alarming rate, in part due to rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing. Tenants like myself with prior eviction records often remain shut out of housing in the future.
After my eviction, it felt like I suddenly became someone else in the eyes of society, someone not worthy of having their basic human needs met. Homelessness seemed to strip me of my identity, and I became that ugly part of the world that Americans like to ignore. That identity followed me into the shelter system and back out again.
As an unhoused person, it was as if every aspect of daily life became difficult and expensive to access overnight. Every day was a hunt for running water, heat, internet, power, shelter from bad weather, and a bathroom. Because I was a student at The New School at the time, the campus became a safe place to exist. I spent the majority of my time in campus libraries where I took naps and accessed WiFi—unless I couldn’t make the two-hour trip from my Queens shelter to the Manhattan campus.
On those days, I needed to find somewhere else I could use in order to send emails and make calls because I was still desperately seeking help. I spent entire days in Starbucks, which was only a short walk from my overnight shelter. Going to the coffee shop helped me blend in and feel human now that any semblance of “normal” had slipped away. I was able to order drinks and food, but for those who cannot, Starbucks is no longer an option. This year, the company reversed its open-door policy and now requires people to make a purchase if they want to hang out inside or use the restroom.
I was among the “lucky” who had access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known more commonly as “food stamps.” When the funds hit my SNAP account, I often ate from the deli section of grocery stores. Food stamps don’t really go very far when you don’t have access to a fridge to store food or a stove to cook. I couldn’t buy anything that I couldn’t carry.
I quickly found a walk-in shelter, which are typically first come, first served, and only open at night. It took a few more weeks to get accepted into a transitional shelter through DHS. While that shelter gave me access to a kitchen, there were hundreds of us trying to use the kitchen at the same time. We even had to purchase our own burners for the stove—punishment for theft, the shelter claimed. There was still no access to a fridge at the transitional shelter, so cooking fresh food remained largely inaccessible.
It’s not difficult to see how adverse conditions compound for the poor. Food prices have increased exponentially over the last six years, and even among New York City’s housed population, food security “remains a pertinent and persistent problem,” according to the organization Community Service Society. Among elected officials at both the state and federal levels, there appears to be no political will to keep the intersecting crises of homelessness from turning into a full-blown, nationwide catastrophe.
Grave Threats
I eventually found my way out of homelessness, though it’s not the story many would expect or even want to hear.
DHS shuffled me through a few different shelters and paired me with a social worker who firmly believed that most homeless people were lazy, irresponsible, dangerous, or simply “working the system” for free housing. He expressed these sentiments to me regularly, while his clients remained stuck in the shelter system for years at a time—as if they would choose to live among rats, with clogged toilets, and in rooms where humidity dripped from the walls. Despite working in the system, he didn’t seem to understand that landlords often discriminate against people who have been homeless or must use housing vouchers. Not to mention that the New York City Housing Authority’s waitlist for public housing was closed for 15 years before reopening last year. It is not possible to “work a system” that never worked in the first place.
I now live in an apartment, and it’s not because I worked harder than others to get out of the shelter system; it’s because of sheer luck and the kindness of strangers.
I sent dozens of brutally honest emails to any apartment broker I could find, detailing my current living situation, my bad credit, my student loan debt, my inability to have a cosigner, and the meager amount of money I could realistically afford to pay in rent.
Among the few replies I received back, I learned that unless I made five times the amount of rent or could pay at least six months of security deposit or a year of rent in advance, I would likely remain unhoused. These are absurd and unreasonable expectations for any person—especially a homeless person. But they are the expectations of most landlords in the city.
Things began to turn around when I met a man we’ll call Jay, who waived his broker fee and promised to help me find housing. On a weekly basis, he picked me up from my shelter and carted me around Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, following every potential lead he could find. While apartment hunting, a friend encouraged me to circulate a mutual aid post online. Before long, I had the security deposit and first month’s rent for an apartment—if I could actually find one to rent.
There was a lot of rejection along the way, and there were some scams and sketchy, likely illegal apartments. There was some deception on our side, too. We constructed a semi-true story about who I was. Jay told the landlords that I was living with my family in a space that was overcrowded, and that I was a student, which was true. Jay hid the parts he knew landlords did not want to see while playing up the parts he knew they’d like. My college education was a privilege. It helped that I just looked like a typical college student. Being able-bodied, white-passing, English-speaking, and employed all helped me escape long-term homelessness. In February of 2019, these advantages also helped lead to an apartment that was offered to me on the spot.
Overall, I was homeless for nearly a year. I’ve now been housed for six years, and, sometimes, it still doesn’t feel real. Other times, I find myself obsessing over everything that went wrong along the way.
What if things had been different? What if I was never homeless? What if instead of having to create slumlord watchlists, there were actual repercussions for slumlords instead of the people they render homeless? What if SNAP allowed hot food purchases for homeless recipients? What if I was paired with a kind, compassionate social worker who advocated for me?
Despite the viral news stories about “squatters” and the evils of tenant protection laws, the cards are certainly stacked against renters—and conditions are only getting worse. Republican lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would allow landlords nationwide to give tenants less than three days’ notice before an eviction. President Donald Trump’s second term is also a grave threat to the lives of poor and homeless people. His administration is gutting federal agencies that administer already underfunded and under-resourced housing and food assistance programs. As Project 2025 comes to fruition, the inevitable outcome for everyday people is increased poverty and homelessness, as social programs meant to help those in need are the first on the chopping block.
In the face of these worsening conditions, we often hear the phrase, “We keep each other safe.” In my case, I know that to be true. Without Jay and mutual aid, I’d still be homeless. I’m grateful for both, but the fate of the unhoused shouldn’t depend on the kindness of strangers.
“Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.”
Originally published by Prism, 04.10.2025, republished with permission.
