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The Bill for My Homelessness Was $54,000
Illustration by Rosie Roberts

The Bill for My Homelessness Was $54,000

My descent into homelessness felt as though it happened in the blink of an eye. It was as if one moment I was standing in a meadow next to my horses, stroking their manes, and the next I was lying inside a plastic garbage bag on a park bench, wrapping clothes around my shivering body.

In fact, it happened over the course of 12 devastating months from 2013 to 2014. The house I was renting in Oregon burned down. My mother died of a cancer that, until a short time earlier, no one knew she had. My family fell into a bitter dispute over her inheritance and ostracized me. My beagle died. I was emotionally burdened to the point of being unable to run the business I had owned for nearly a decade, let alone pay my rent. Eventually, I was told to pack my bags and leave the new place I had rented after the fire.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

 

Lori Teresa Yearwood is a housing crisis reporter for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Her work has been recently featured in the Washington Post, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, the American Prospect, and many other publications.

Save An Endangered Species: Journalists

Lori Teresa Yearwood's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Slate, and many other publications. Additionally, Ms. Yearwood speaks nationwide about the intersection of trauma-aware journalism and the well-being of our communities. In 2022, Ms. Yearwood received two prestigious fellowships: one from Poynter Institute fellowship at Yale, and another at the USC Annenberg Health Foundation. She is currently working on her memoir.

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