Thread:AcceledAcceled/@comment-35072152-20181015030114

I'm posting this on your wall for your Gacha episode, and maybe my story can help inspire you to share this story with many others, and people will see the true meaning of family, faith, and hope, and what it's like to be homeless.

Before I was homeless, I was living peacefully, until one day, a fire started at my house. It was set on fire by a group of other people who had been firing gunshots, and setting houses on fire. I lived in NJ at the time. The police and firefighters had showed up, and we had to repprt what happened. After that, we had to go to the Town Square to let them know that our house had burned down, and that we needed help finding shelters in our area. New Jersey told us they could not help us, and that they only had overnight shelters instead of shelters that families can stay in until they found a new place to live. Unfortunately, we had no luck, and we had to go to a building in NYC where all of the homeless families were. They had to fill out paperwork, and the process took a whole day. After we filled out paper on our past residence and what happened and the police report we filed, we had to go upstairs where we had to wait a few hours to meet with our caseworker. While we were waiting, around lunchtime, we had to go to the cafeteria where they had sandwiches that had been defrosted from the freezer, a fruit, and possibly a yogurt. Then a few hours later, we finally got to speak with our caseworker, and talk to them about what happened. After that, we had to go up another flight to wait for our placement. In the shelter, there was only one room with bunk beds, and a bathroom, and a kitchen. After two weeks, we had to wait to see if the shelter approved us to see if we were eligeable for that assistance.

It took a few times before we had to be approved. We were missing some details and things to use to prove that we were homeless. Usually the shelter process is very strict because a lot of people have scammed the NY state government to get free homeless shelter housing to avoid paying any rent. It took us about 4 or 5 times until we got approved.

The building we went to was big, and busy, and full of families. Some families were crying, and a lot of the kids were misbehaving. So when we finally got approved, we stayed there. (The conditions in that shelter apartment was nasty. There were rats, spiders, and people throwing garbage out of the windows, and everything. So we requested to be transfered to another location. It took us about 3 times until they relocated us.) Then after we got relocated, the apartment was much more functional. My family was poor, and there would be times we had to jump the trains to get to food pantries to stock up on food. Because the shelter complex I was in was in the city, we couldn't drive and our car often got a lot of parking tickets and was even towed once for violation of the city overnight sanitation crew schedule.

Then, we had a housing specialist. The specialist had to help my family find a new house. The rules with the shelter is that you are not allowed to leave at night, or the administration for that complex will report your family to the homeless services as proof that you have another place to stay. The government had to pay a lot of money to house each family in each shelter apartment, so that's why they try to get every family out as soon as possible.

Eventually, we found a house, and moved in. Everything was alright after that. 