Eviction and mental illness: I grew up in an abandoned apartment complex.
Eviction moratorium. For property owners, this is a delay in payment that sinks businesses. For adults and children in low socioeconomic households, this can be a life jacket.
For over a decade, I’ve lived in an abandoned apartment complex in Chicago with my mom and siblings. You can say, I’ve mastered the art of passing as normal, wearing second-hand clothes from my older sister near in age, receiving honors in my elementary and high school classes, and being generally well-behaved and reserved.
I still struggle coining this collective experience I shared with my siblings and single mom. Homelessness sounds so severe and this wasn’t exactly tent living. Were we squatters? Does this mean we were homeless for over a decade? There was still a physical roof over our heads, a residential address to formally pass along, and hot running water for some time — but the neglect comes in sudden waves and that’s when you’re expected to get creative to survive.
Blending is how most things survive in the wild, after all. Sultry summers of my childhood were spent buying paletas with spare change, splashing around in cheap inflatable pools, and occasional skips to Hollywood beach to take in the Lake Michigan view. Here, I was a full-time chameleon, a professional show woman, and I had fooled the world around me. No one had ever suspected my family and I were living on abandoned property.
The system had failed my family. My immigrant parents had unresolved mental health issues and trauma. In some sort of way, we were all lucky enough to seep through the cracks of severe misfortune. We stayed together.
Let’s rewind. In 1998, my family moved into what would later become an abandoned apartment complex in a growing affluent neighborhood. My Polish mother, my Mexican father, my older sister, me, and my younger brother. A few years later, a younger sister enters the picture. For the start of a new millennium, it was sort of the place to rent on the Northside. Location, location, location. A few tenants and their growing families populated the units. The elder landlord himself and his wife occupied the floor just above us. Tomato seeds were planted by the landlord’s wife, as she hung her laundry out on the clothesline to dry on our shared porch. My father was a carpenter, and he had previously established a business relationship with the landlord by remodeling his restaurant.
It’s a slippery slope when addiction takes over the finances of a single-income household.
We began to fall short on rent for a few months, and soon we were buried in informal I-owe-yous. A few months go by, and no payments are made. The late payments and excuses begin to pile on, and each month the anxiety flows over to the next. Where will we go if he takes us to court? Will he even take us to court? Where will we all go? At this difficult time, my father stopped coming home and left his obligations to a single mom of four. He changed his drinking spots, and we began to receive informal notices on our front door to vacate the property. We began to receive threats our water and electricity will be turned off. My mother paces the house, sits quietly, but her mind is on overdrive. She hasn’t a clue on what to do, and besides, we all had school in the morning.
The landlord and his wife were compassionate, and perhaps, felt the loss of a father figure for us, too. They saw four dirt-covered faces playing in the grass, food stamps, Medicaid letters, and a single unemployed parent. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news and contribute to more suffering.
There’s a switch that occurs. Maybe, it’s pride mixed in with helplessness. Spaces you occupy begin to tell you how to feel.
The fear quickly turns into embarrassment and shame, and it all begins to alter you and your behaviors. You don’t want to play outside, you don’t want to be seen. You pick up actions that make you even smaller. You want to be invisible so bad. Shame really wants you to disappear. You will hold the door in a unique position to avoid hinge squeaks, you will turn off the lights to appear not home, and you begin to whisper in your own home. You’re afraid to be loud, afraid to play, and ashamed to take space in where you are now: home.
The world becomes a narrow tunnel slowly closing in.
As seasons changed, tenants moved on. An artsy college graduate moves in and brings in some splash of color — she paints the mailbox entrance door one afternoon and hosts some loud parties. There’s a shift in attention and priorities looming in the complex. The yard receives less attention, maintenance requests become scarce, and a weight is placed off your chest now that it’s empty. Each unit but two is empty. At least you have a roof over your head. Be grateful you have a place.
One day, I remember seeing a pink line on the Landlord’s bare chest while walking home from school with my siblings. He walked alongside the neglected vegetable garden — now sprouting with rampant local weed—with his shirt unbuttoned. He had received open-heart surgery a few months prior and had aged years before our eyes. Ashamed, we looped around the block, buying ourselves some time to wait for him to go back inside.
That’s one of the last few times we ever saw our landlord. Maybe, he inherited financial or legal trouble, maybe he just wanted to live out his days in peace without the heaviness of coming down hard on a family living below the poverty line. I don’t know how his story goes. He just left. The apartment complex had to live out its days, too.
We spent the next few years squatting in this apartment building. Electricity payments were made partially and directly, the water pressure became weak, and soon enough, we were boiling water on the stove just to take a hot bath. The refrigerator stops working, and we’re left storing groceries inside a cooler.
When we could reach him, we phoned our estranged father to help us set up a power generator in the basement. The wear and tear of a neglected place begin to come down hard on the few of us there. The artsy college graduate leaves. It was time to stay creative to survive. Leaving wasn’t an option. This was our chance to keep a roof over our heads. Besides, where would we go? This household didn’t bring in a stable income for future residential properties to approve of.
Winter arrives in Chicago’s lakeside, and you can catch your exhaled breath inside the house. Wear your scarves, your coat, anything warm to bed. Three futon mattresses in the living room sleeps five. Go to class, go to work, no one needs to know.
My older sister receives notice she’s been given a full-ride university scholarship to the flagship state school. Spring arrives, and we collect rainwater in a bucket to help flush a malfunctioning toilet. There is a way out, but it’s still murky. There’s hope on the horizon, a sense of renewing light seeping through the edges of the mismatched and crooked drapes, every morning.
This space frankly still haunts me, even as a successful young marketer, career coach, loving sister, and wife. When I visit pockets of Chicago, I’m reminded of these housing insecurities and lived troubles. There are countless more stories like mine hovering on the city’s skyline to be told, and this makes me want to rattle them, so many Americans can see. Homelessness doesn’t exactly embody a certain look, it’s secretive and happening right in front of you.
This space I’ve occupied as a child and young adult with my siblings has enabled me to coast off hypervigilance, a daring state of alertness. Surviving was choosing life, to forego another day in this mess. And I’ve done ugly things and lived ugly. I am not my inherited circumstances.
I get to choose now to process with a licensed health professional. That’s a privilege I never thought I’d see, let alone, afford.
“You’re out of that house now, Jenny.”
“You’ve got your needs met now.”
“You are OK.”
The body wants life. Home is such a funny little construct.
