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| User: | being_homeless (940879)  |
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| Thoughts and Opinions of a Formerly Homeless Girl | |||||
| Name: | Writings from the perspective of a homeless girl | ||||
| Website: | Please Read My Disclaimer | ||||
| Location: | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | ||||
| E-mail: |
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| Bio: |  About Me: My name is Crystal Evans and I’m a 23-year-old living in Massachusetts. I’m a writer, a public speaker and a homelessness activist. I write for What's Up Magazine, a Boston Street Paper, and The Bridge, an alternative newspaper in the Cambridge area. I speak regularly at various universities and activists events on issues related to poverty, homelessness and healthcare. I’m a registered Green-Rainbow voter in Massachusetts and I’m actively involved in local politics and the battle for affordable housing. I’m a member of the Mystic River Green Rainbow Action and I’m currently volunteering for the Carolina Johnson for State Rep. campaign. My Struggle for Healthcare In February 2001 I was involved in a car accident that left me with a broken neck, traumatic brain injury and a seizure disorder. My recovery over the past few years has been a struggle. As a result of the brain injury, I ended up with a lot of neurological and cognitive problems including short term memory loss, ataxia and vertigo, and speech problems. Because of my neurological and cognitive problems, I lost 9 jobs in the first 16 months following my accident. Without a job I had no health insurance. Without insurance I couldn't get healthcare or rehab and my seizure medications were a couple hundred dollars a month. I applied to the state of New Hampshire for Medicaid and Social Security Disability but was told I needed more medical documentation to determine my case. I couldn't get that documention without insurance, and I couldn't get insurance without having a job. I was caught in the bureaucratic cycle and it seemed there was no way out. I ended up homeless from April-July 2002 when I was in between jobs. Without a steady job I couldn't afford rent and in the meantime my SSDI claim was sitting on a shelf "pending." I got a section 8 voucher that summer and got housing and a job. But in October 2002 just after my health insurance kicked in I ended up having a lot more complications with my brain injury and seizures and I ended up hospitalized. I took a 12-week medical leave and I was never allowed to return to work because my medications and seizures weren't stablized. So I lost my job (again) and my insurance. During this time my landlord quit taking section 8 and I couldn't afford the rent or find another place to live. So in February 2003 I ended up homeless once again. My Journey Through Homelessness After much research, I found out that Massachusetts offered free healthcare to it's low-income residents. Early 2003 they also had an abondance of section 8 vouchers and many shelters. Between the vouchers, the shelters, the healthcare (and excellent hospitals), and the fact that Massachusetts has decent public transportation I decided to relocate to Massachusetts in hopes of getting back on my feet quickly. I first ended up in Gloucester, Massachusetts- a small fishing village on the North Shore. I stayed there for about 5 weeks until spring came and when they reduced the amount of available beds in the shelter I headed to Boston. I immediately applied for Section 8 again as well as for MassHealth (Medicaid) and EAEDC (state disability). I also transferred my SSDI claim to Massachusetts. I was immediately approved for MassHealth and in May I started recieving state disability benefits. I was finally able to start recieving medical care. I quickly got evaluations and obtained the necessary medical documentation of the long-term effects my brain injury had on me. In July 2003, after a 19 month wait, I finally got approved for my social security benefits. My MassHealth coverage increased enough for me to be covered for rehab. so in August I started speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy twice a week for nearly a year. In the meantime, section 8 waitlists were "frozen" in Massachusetts and the homeless were being told the waitlists were 2-3 years long. I finally had the income I needed for housing- just now there was no housing available. I ended up bouncing shelter to shelter and finally in the fall of 2003 I realized it was much easier to stay on the streets. I didn't have to worry about early curfews, and it made my schedule more flexible for rehab instead of worrying about running back to the shelter in between therapy appointments in hopes of getting a bed ticket in the bed lottery. When I wasn't at rehab, I was volunteering for Ronald McDonald House, Childrens Hospital or other local non-profits. It gave me some place to go all day and something to look forward to. I had also applied for voc rehab services through MassRehab in hopes of being able to hold a job. I wanted to go back to school. I needed someway to make the time pass. So in September 2003 I enrolled at Harvard Extension School in the writing program. On the nights I didn't have classes, I'd loiter in cafe's around Harvard and Davis Square writing papers on a laptop someone had given me. Around midnight when the cafe's would close I'd pack up my bags and head to one of my favorite spots to sleep at night. Early in the morning when the subway started running, I'd grab my blankets and bag and make my way to the redline and ride it back and forth for a couple hours until the Transitional Day program I went to opened for breakfast. If I wasn't at rehab or volunteering I'd spend my afternoons at Youth on Fire- a drop in center for homeless youth located in Harvard Square. I had filled out literally hundreds of applications for housing. Some waitlists were 2-3 years by the time I got onto them, other applications were "housing lotteries" where they drew names for who gets the available housing. I lucked out on a few lotteries and my name ended up near the top of the list. But finally on Christmas Eve I got a call that one of the places I had applied to had approved my housing application and would be having an apartment in 6-8 weeks. My journal through homelessness was ending, but as I saw it, my fight for affordable housing was just beginning- not for me personally, but for those around me. I couldn't just walk away from homelessness and forget the people I met and the stories I heard. I knew I needed to do something. So I'm taking my story sharing it with others to help break the stereotypes of homelessness and to show how easy it can happen to anyone. For me, all it took was a car accident to put my life into a downward spiral. How My Journal Began  I started my journal the week I became homeless. I was living in a shelter in Gloucester,MA. There was nothing to do all day. We had to leave the shelter by 8am every morning. And we couldn't return til 5pm every night. I wandered around the streets of Gloucester dragging 2 duffle bags of belongings everywhere I went. I was cold. And hungry. I didn't know of any soup kitchens. And the meals at the shelter were barely enough to fill my stomach. I would collect cans all day for the 5 cent deposit. Then I would stick the change in my paper envelope and go to a little restaurant on Main St. in Gloucester for breakfast. Most mornings I would get toast since that was all I could afford. If I was lucky I had an extra 40 cents for an egg and I would ask for them to make an egg sandwich. I had a paper journal and gel pens and I would sit and write for an hour or two until the library opened. I often hung out at the library. It was the only warm dry place I could go without being in trouble for loitering. We were given an hour a day online at the library. Sometimes the librarians would let me on longer if no one was waiting for a computer. I'd wander around the library and read the books on the shelves. I read about stuff like feminism, poverty, psychology, and sociology. When I got sick of reading, I would pull out my journal and write. I had til 4:30 every day there. Then I would drag all my belongings back to the shelter and get in line for a bed. I would get back to the shelter, get in line for a bed, and once inside I'd climb up to my top bunk and lay there and write for a few more hours. Then one night I was laying in bed when it occurred to me that I should start transferring my written thoughts to the internet. A friend helped me start an online journal through livejournal. And I began copying my thoughts onto the internet as a journal kept by 'an anonymous homeless girl.' I was homeless and scared. I wrote about my fears. And the things I saw in my shelter.My Story in the Press In July 2003, the Boston Globe came across my journal and contacted me asking if they could do an article on me I agreed to it and on July 27, 2003 the first of 3 Globe articles was published: "Homeless.com" along with excerpts from my journal. October 12 a second article came out: Still homeless, but she says she sees the light and on December 21 I was featured again in the Boston Globe as one of the top 12 stories of the year in A dozen who made a difference.  Make an Online Donation to Youth on Fire a drop-in center for homeless youth (in the designation spot put 'Youth on Fire')  layout: Robber's Daughter by ![[info]](http://library.vu.edu.pk/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/000100A/http/web.archive.org/web/20050119094150im_/http:/=2fstat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} roniabirk | ||||
| Memories: | 31 entries | ||||
| Interests: | 150: activism, adbusters, affordable housing, aids, amnesty international, anti-bush, anti-capitalism, anti-classism, anti-consumerism, anti-corporation, anti-discrimination, anti-domestic violence, anti-globalization, anti-homophobia, anti-racism, anti-rape activism, anti-sexism, anti-war movement, art, assault, awareness, basic human rights, being homeless, blogging, blogs, brain injury, bridge over troubled waters, cambridge, car-free, change, civil rights, community activism, community based economics, conservation, creative writing, david cobb, davis square, decentralization, diesel cafe, disability, diversity, domestic abuse, domestic violence, dumpster diving, ecological wisdom, empowerment, environment, environmentalism, equal opportunity, equal rights, equality, essays, fair trade, feminism, feminist, fighting the system, food not bombs, food stamps, garbage picking, gay rights, grassroots, grassroots democracy, green party, green-rainbow, green-rainbow party, harvard, harvard extension school, harvard square, harvard university, healthcare for all, helping, hiv, homeless, homeless bloggers, homeless blogs, homeless children, homeless families, homeless folks, homeless men, homeless people, homeless shelters, homeless transexuals, homeless women, homeless youth, homelessness, human rights, human rights organizations, hunger, jobless, journaling, justice, lesbian, low-income housing, make trade fair, making a difference, memoirs, michael graves, nonviolence, orkut, oxfam, panhandlers, panhandling, peace, personal and global responsibility, politics, poor, poverty, pro-active, pro-choice, public assistance, public transportation, queer youth, rape, respect for diversity, revolution, seizure disorders, shelter life, shelters, social change, social justice, sociology, soup kitchens, spare change news, street kids, street newspapers, street youth, streets, sweatshops, target, the bridge, the onion, thrift stores, transgender rights, trash picking, volunteer, volunteer work, volunteering, volunteerism, welfare, welfare rights, what's up magazine, women's rights, women's studies, womens rights, working poor, world peace, writing a memoir, youth activism, youth on fire, ♀♀. [Modify yours] | ||||
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