Gobsmacked & Godsmacked: How Reddit & Twitter Saved My Life During the American Pandemic

Have you ever wondered HOW homelessness happens to someone - if for no other reason than to not do whatever stupid thing you ASSume THAT PERSON obviously did to get there? Trust me when I tell you - you can be utterly blameless and still end up without a home.  This seems important to mention because far too many people in America only want to help the “fully blameless” and the “true victim of a horrible circumstance” and will turn help away from any person they think may have contributed to, in any way, their crap lot in life.  

    In my case, I was discharged  from the hospital in April 2020 following a nearly fatal case of COVID19 with bilateral pneumonia.  Many people used to ask me in 2020 what it was like to have such a severe case of bilateral pneumonia with COVID. I tell people it feels much like I imagine being waterboarded does while slowly choking to death on your own lung fluid.  Upon discharge from the hospital, I still could not seem to take a deep breath - no matter how hard I tried the breaths were not satiating and my breaths were shockingly shallow. I was perpetually fatigued, was suddenly & inexplicably profoundly deaf, I kept collapsing while walking and losing consciousness. And I was still coughing: hard, long, lung-ruining coughing fits. At this time in early 2020, the terms “longhaul COVID or post-COVID” had not even yet been coined and they did not know what they did not know about the long-term effects of such a serious case of COVID.  I was told the only reason I survived was because I had none of the comorbidities and I was “just lucky.”  Lucky is not what I was feeling while still struggling to breathe in the Spring of 2020.  In fact, I used to tell people, such a severe case of COVID might not kill you but you may spend the rest of your life wishing it had.  

I went into the hospital with COVID making the daily news and President Trump assuring us everything would be fine for Americans; yet I emerged from the hospital to a locked down Country. Everything was closed - even Walmart.  I would know because I tried to go after 8pm the day of my hospital discharge to pick up prescriptions and was told they now close at 8pm. What? Welcome to the New World of Lockdown 2020 America.  

I next learned that while I was in hospital battling COVID and bilateral pneumonia, my apartment in Central IL had come and gone.  I was due to renew my Lease on March 31 but I disappeared in February 2020 and was never seen again.  By mid-April 2020, all of my belongings and my apartment were gone and the unit rented to someone else.  To add insult to injury in this devastating moment - I found out that my own niece (lifelong crack addict of 35 years)  “hocked my crib” (stole everything from my apartment & sold it for drugs) while I lay dying of COVID in the hospital. I wasn’t actually expected to live.  And if it wasn’t for her misfortune, I’d be a heavenly person today.     

So there I was: having lost my home, all of my possessions (which included considerable sums of cash in a metal box in my apartment as I had to live on “cash only” as the result of extreme identity theft/financial fraud that happened to me by a bad actor prior landlord St. Louis in 2019)  - so ALSO then penniless - and without the foggiest notion of what to do about any of it.  What do you do when you suddenly have no home at night? What do you do when all of your belongings are gone? What do you do when you are rendered penniless thanks to an intentional robbery BY YOUR OWN FAMILY?  What do you do when you no longer can trust or even like your own family after being betrayed by one of them; and when you mention pressing charges against that criminal family member you are ostracized by that so-called “family” as the HORRIBLE ONE because “the addict is sick and needs help…” What do you do when there is a raging pandemic and your Country is locked down so nearly ALL of the agencies charged with helping in a situation JUST LIKE THIS aren’t even answering their phones? And your friends are afraid you might give them COVID - for in the early days of COVID19, we did not yet know what we now know about the virus. So no family, no friends and no societal/agency support are coming to help you. What would you do? 

My whole life I was told that in America if you ever fell on hard times - help is ALWAYS there.  And I believed that false narrative for decades of my privileged life.  Even in the BEST of times in America, the notion that some mythical social safety net is going to save you is an outright lie.  But during mandatory lockdown during a global pandemic? It’s especially untrue and bordering on cruel to even suggest that anyone at all from any part of our failed government systems is coming to help you.   

So what did I do?  

Initially, I planned on returning to where I lived in Springfield IL despite no longer having an apartment and asking people for help there.  But I had been hospitalized in St. Louis MO and was “car dwelling” just over the border from Missouri in Collinsville IL.  I was warned by “the helpers” I could find to guide me through this quagmire that “I should stay in the MetroEast IL area because returning to Springfield IL - a much smaller town - would guarantee EVEN LESS agencies and resources would be available to help me.”  Who told me this? The police and a local church worker who actually answered the phone when I did contact a random local church for help.  That was the church lady’s only “offering of help” available for me: stay here even though “here” has nothing available to help you.

So there I was one night, around dusk, in my car.  In the parking lot of an abandoned restaurant just staring out into the middle distance wondering if I was actually going to die from this Pandemic after all.  It seemed especially cruel and ironic to have actually survived such a long COVID hospitalization only to be felled by the clusterflop our Country became as our government failed to properly manage the Pandemic from the outset.  

And then - just like that - someone did appear amidst this dire circumstance.  He startled me out of my despondent daze by rapping on my car window.  His name was John and he was with Call for Help, Inc - a mental health agency in the MetroEast area of IL.  He showed me his business card, pressed against the glass of my closed & protective car window and he asked me if I was okay or if I needed help.  I told him what had happened and he told me there was a hotel program being paid for by the State of IL to shelter folks during the Lockdown and he could get me into the Program.  

Side Note: Please understand that the homeless scene is filled with faux, would-be heroes who promise the moon and stars but who are, in reality, monstrous predators engaged in human trafficking.  I instinctively knew not to trust “just anyone with any promise to me” from my years of legal training (they train us to be the most hardcore skeptics of other people because 1 lie can ruin an entire trial).  So I did my due diligence, called John’s employer, verified that Call for Help is a bonafide business trying to do good in this World and that there was a hotel program available to those without anywhere to shelter in place during the Lockdown as he had said.   To this I will say: Thank you State of IL and Governor Pritzker because it is NOW a well-known sad fact that many Red States just left their unhoused neighbors to die during Lockdown 2020.  Also, of note: I was eligible for this “dv distinction” in this COVID hotel program due to my prior registration in the IL Domestic Violence Victims Program with the IL Attorney General’s Office.  This is an extremely useful Program that I worked to help implement in 2019 in Illinois which serves to shield victims from their abusers/stalkers. And I can honestly say it saves countless lives every year.  Again, Governor Pritzker made this Safety for DV Survivors Program possible so, again, I commend him for his Administration’s work in this regard.   

I presented to the designated hotel that John from Call for Help gave me the information for and proceeded to check-in. It was a “homeless hotel program” but because I was a victim of (prior to the pandemic) domestic violence (by the same bad actor prior STL landlord who also perpetrated massive identity theft against me in 2019), I entered the program as a DV survivor rather than a “longterm street homeless person.”  Turns out - that’s largely a distinction without a difference when it comes to actual available resources offered to you as a homeless person in IL - but I would not learn that nugget of wisdom until sometime later. My point? When people INSIST that domestic violence shelters and resources are kinder, gentler and better - do NOT believe that propaganda.  They are not any better at managing America’s affordable housing crisis than any other “helper agency” grifting money for themselves while claiming to attenuate the homeless crisis in IL.  

If you ever wondered WHY so many unhoused people choose “Tent Cities” of their own design right in front of the very congregate shelters they refuse to enter - this is why: all congregate shelters are dangerous, riddled with lice & bedbugs, violent, unsafe and unhealthy places where human beings are merely warehoused and never safely rehoused outside of the shelter system ever.  But at this particular time in May 2020, I did not know any of those sad facts and instead, for a brief moment in time, I had a glimmer of hope that things were going to improve for me now that the domestic violence “helpers” and the “mental health agency” were assigned to my personal housing tragedy.  For if anyone needs emotional support, it is someone who is enduring ongoing narcissistic abuse from a stalker lunatic (former) landlord.  

I was eventually connected to mental health support via Centerstone Behavioral Health in Alton IL. Yet sadly, they were nothing but unqualified Medicaid bottom-feeders who were not trauma-informed and whose Agency is in a constant state of staff attrition due to higher level mismanagement.  I had never in my life seen such incompetents in a position of power over vulnerable people’s lives.  It should come as no surprise that they proved ultimately not only unhelpful but downright dangerous in how uninformed they were.  My therapist admitted to me AFTER A YEAR of tele-therapy that she did not even know what narcissistic personality disorder is and how the abuse these monstrous predators heap upon the unsuspecting givers of the World can be long-lasting and irrevocable.  I believe Centerstone “means well” but “meaning well and doing well” are two different metrics and they really should be disbanded as a mental health resource for anyone but the hardcore addicts who are sent to them via Drug Court.  I am not even certain they have the capacity to serve those clients either but their performance THERE has to be better than those needing trauma-informed, intensive healing from PTSD and narcissistic abuse.  For those unfortunate folks like me in need of real trauma-informed, psychological intervention? Centerstone is fully unable to assist you on any level.         

 The “homeless hotel program” was mostly for the hardcore, long-term street homeless folks to be sheltered during Lockdown 2020 but there were a few other women there with me who were also there due to domestic violence, too.  It’s important to note that “the Hotel Program” required a State ID to enter the hotel and had I not had that with me at the hospital - I would have been ineligible for this Program as my criminal, addict niece trashed anything she couldn’t sell for drugs.  I mention this because remember - this was Lockdown 2020 - DMVs were not open then. It wasn’t like anyone could get a replacement Driver’s License the next day at this particular time in America if they happened to lose theirs.  As a result, many who also needed this shelter in this Hotel Program were turned away for want of a simple photo ID. The homeless system is nothing if not cruel and determined to set so many vulnerable people up to fail from the outset by creating unnecessary barriers to entry for their programs.  This bureaucratic nonsense harming our unhoused neighbors must be eliminated and attenuated immediately if we have any genuine regard for human lives left languishing for want of a simple ID card.     

I will always be grateful to the owner of that Motel 6 who decided to keep his franchise location OPEN during the early days of the Pandemic and take the government grant money for housing the homeless and displaced people during Lockdown.  He did not have to do that.  Most hotels in the area closed for the majority of 2020.  And the drama and surreal level of tommyrot that owner of that franchise location (and his staff) had to put up with on the daily  that comes with “managing the more unruly (read: medically and mentally untreated) homeless folks cannot be fully conveyed here by me for there simply are no words.  THAT particular aspect of this experience could fill an entire book all by itself - truly it could.  Because by the time I got there, it was MAY 2020 and the “hardcore street homeless” had been in the program and many already evicted out of the hotel program SINCE LOCKDOWN BEGAN IN MARCH 2020.  So, three months in, and the hotel rooms weren’t fairing very well.  Only one room of 200 still  had a working microwave in it that had not been broken or stolen by the previous unhoused population there and none of the rooms had a mini-refrigerator as is typically offered at most Motel 6 locations.  

So, I had somehow, miraculously managed to secure shelter yet no way to cook or store food.    

    A woman from the local chapter (East St. Louis IL) of St. Vincent de Paul DID came by daily to deliver “sack lunches” to the Program participants which consisted generally of chips and a peanut butter sandwich.  That was it - that was the sole source of food FOR THE DAY if you were stranded at that hotel without a car, homeless and without any money.  I often wonder about this food ration handout by St. Vincent de Paul in IL because SEVERAL TIMES PER WEEK I traveled over the Missouri border to Downtown St. Louis MO (literally 7 miles away) to St. Vincent de Paul Church on S. 10th Street specifically because they continued to serve hot, fresh, nutritious dinners to the homeless of St. Louis throughout the entire Lockdown and Pandemic.  I began taking some of the moms with kids WITH ME who were also in the DV Homeless Program at the hotel so that they, too, could get these wholesome, delicious meals.  The difference in how the St. Vincent de Paul staff treated us in IL vs the compassionate outreach for the homeless in MO was stark: the lady who came from East St. Louis IL to the Motel 6 daily always seemed angry and largely disdainful of the population she was purportedly there to serve. But in St. Louis, MO - the St. Vincent de Paul Church there treated us with dignity, compassion and kindness.  They learned our names, noticed that I always brought thank you notes for them/the helpers there working to serve us in spite of the raging pandemic (at grave risk to their own health) and they always offered me “extras” and - prayed for me and with me.  That means more than you might think when you are in the gutter of homelessness, flying blind and frantically trying to find a way out of this lethal quagmire.  

 If you are in St. Louis MO and you are reading this Memoir (or even if you are located elsewhere) and you want to know a worthwhile, legitimate church truly doing the work of Jesus as Jesus instructed His believers to do in terms of “feed the hungry, help the homeless, care for the widows and orphans” – it is St. Vincent de Paul located on S. 10th Street. (314) 231-9328.  It is impossible to know how many lives they saved during COVID19 in America but I assure you that I am a living testament to their unfailing compassion amidst trying times.   They even had staff members fall ill with COVID during this timeframe during Lockdown; yet, nevertheless, they persisted and they did not stop serving their unhoused neighbors.  I will forever be grateful to them and I owe them a debt (the fact that I’m still alive and did not die from abject malnutrition) that I can never repay.  So if you are so inclined towards any end-of-year charitable religious donations for tax purposes or other reasons but do not know where to give because you’ve come to believe all churches are scams; please, please consider donating to the amazing organization that is St. Vincent De Paul in St. Louis Mo.  Every day on social media I see people banging on about how no TRUE CHRISTIANS exist today who truly live, act and believe as Jesus taught them to do. I am here to testify that St. Vincent de Paul Church in St. Louis MO does because I witnessed it firsthand.  I, along with so many others, are living proof that SVDP acted with compassion to feed the hungry and save lives during the Pandemic and they should be applauded for that.       

Obviously, for purposes of traveling to St. Vincent de Paul in STL and local grocery stores in the MetroEast area of IL to obtain daily food, I was fortunate at this juncture (and before) in that I had a vehicle. I fully realize this fact and will remain forever grateful that my dire circumstances at this time was not made way worse because I did still, at least, have my car.  That is why I made it a point to share what little I had with others who were also in need  because I was raised with integrity and morals and the notion that we are to share with others whenever we can.  Also important: when my addict niece stole everything from me she left me with literally nothing to wear either. I had literally 1 pair of shorts and 1  bra for the whole of Summer 2020 given to me by St. Vincent de Paul in St. Louis MO BEFORE the CDC Guidance was issued regarding fabric clothing being a potential pathway of transmission for COVID.  They are good people doing good work there at St. Vincent de Paul in St. Louis and they deserve major kudos, applause and recognition for their dedication to service to others.      

REGARDING MY DIRE MONETARY SITUATION DURING SUMMER 2020 - UNDERSTAND THIS MUCH: No money means literally no money - not one dime to your name. When your own niece robs you of all of your cash on hand - all that money is just gone. And you likely cannot fathom what “no money for months on end” translates to in terms of survival but I’m here to tell you it’s quite harrowing and very dangerous to try to survive that way.   Never wonder WHY some people are forced to panhandle or turn to prostitution; instead, ask yourself why the system that is supposed to help us forces people into the streets to beg or offer bodies up for cash. Panhandling and prostitution by the homeless is the collateral damage of a broken homeless outreach system that helps no one in America; it is not a choice nor a moral failing of the person forced to panhandle.    My monetary situation was extra dire because, little did I know, my Pandemic Unemployment Claim NEVER PROCESSED in IL due to IL slamming IDES down hard in July 2020 after months of billions in pandemic unemployment fraud having already occurred.  While I kept waiting on the benefits, I would later learn - a full year later - WHY same never processed.  It’s as tragic as it is stupid.  Also, my first “Federal government stimulus check” never made it to me until mid-September 2020.  Because I am a disabled adult without children, I did not qualify for the “cash benefits” with EBT because apparently our idiotic government just assumes adults without children do not need things like tampons, kleenex, deodorant or underwear.  THAT broken aspect of the system needs to be fundamentally improved, as well.   With my criminal thieving, addict niece having stolen my whole life savings and all of my belongings, I was left with literally NOTHING by way of CASH  for the entire year of 2020- save for the one lone $1200.00 stimulus check that FINALLY found its way to me in September 2020.  This was despite the fact that I qualified for and was owed, and am still owed, over $17,000 in Pandemic Unemployment Benefits from the State of IL.  That claim will never process because IDES is a toxic mess of dysfunction and incompetent State employees.  Governor Pritzker DID address this matter of billions in IDES fraud perpetrated during Lockdown 2020 before I even applied by appointing a new head of IDES in July 2020.  The only thing that accomplished, though, was that IDES literally stopped working AT ALL for the next FULL CALENDAR YEAR and Governor Pritzker bears some responsibility in this government Agency (IDES) that failed so many.  Sadly, on this topic and for this metric, Governor Pritzker gets a fully failed response assessment by me.  IDES is long overdue for a full overhaul and a different person heading up the Agency and with all new State employees who are not fully incompetent working there.  My IL congressional representative from my former Springfield address was on the local news nearly nightly complaining that HIS OFFICE had become the de facto “IDES Call Center” as he was receiving hundreds of calls daily from constituents who simply could not access IDES after July 2020.  This is an unconscionable failure during a Pandemic when so many Americans/Illinoisans lost so much and desperately needed those weekly cash benefits.  I remain grateful to State Senator Steve McClure of Springfield IL for being a consistent voice during 2020 and 2021 of just how dysfunctional and broken IDES is in IL.  Although he never could untangle my particular IDES snafu, he did keep shining a bright light on this catastrophic failure of State government.            

Nevertheless, because I was at least able to  drive myself to St. Vincent de Paul in St. Louis  and to the local Walmart/grocery stores and buy shelf stable food and eat essentially “junk” (everything shelf stable is filled with chemicals and carcinogens and is very unhealthy if eaten consistently and for more than a few days), I likely fared better than many others did who were in my same situation.    I have Huntington’s Disease and the one thing that absolutely guarantees my health WILL rapidly decline and my chorea exacerbate and that I fall into wheelchair dependence is not having access to healthy eating of the all organic, all natural diet my Huntington’s doctors had prescribed for me fourteen (14) years earlier.   I actually tracked and documented my cognitive abilities declining while sheltered at this Homeless Hotel in 2020.  But I also had sustained a TBI (traumatic brain injury) as the result of a brutal assault on February 13, 2020 wherein I was dragged by my ankles down 16 metal steps with my head hitting every step on the way down (and my left knee was also shattered to smithereens in this assault.)  So it was hard to know what exactly was failing  cognitively or why - especially with NO DOCTORS available during the Lockdown and the entire Summer thereafter.  Also, there is an unfortunate and ugly statistic that exists that documents that unhoused people are disproportionately more likely to have TBIs and their cognitive ability is impaired as a result of ongoing daily dehydration, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, trauma and anxiety.  Expecting such medically vulnerable people to navigate the labyrinth bureaucracy, forms, housing authority applications, rental assistance processes etc is wholly unrealistic. Also, homelessness dramatically elevates one’s risk of serious illness, injury and death.  It’s just that harsh of a truth.  

So it is no exaggeration to say that the State of IL made a good call in deciding to rescue the unhoused and shelter them at the Hotel Program during the Lockdowns. Absent this containment, I am certain the death toll of COVID among the homeless population would have been far worse in IL.  But that’s the thing: who is really counting or concerned with how many of our unhoused neighbors died during COVID19? Nearly no one is the answer.          

While being sheltered in the Homeless Hotel Program, I used the month of May 2020 to request Illinois Pandemic EBT benefits, Illinois Medicaid, Illinois Pandemic Unemployment, an IL Lifeline Phone (commonly referred to as an Obama Phone). I also had to order new “originals”of all of my documents lost in the robbery of my apartment by my own niece: birth certificate, social security card, etc. Many programs require you to have those documents in order to get any benefits.  This is a common struggle for the unhoused.  I only lost mine once - because of losing my apartment and being robbed of the contents therein by my own criminal addict niece.  Imagine, though, being chronically homeless and in and out of homeless shelters nightly in a revolving door manner where all of your belongings are repeatedly stolen/lost/accidentally left behind and it’s not hard to imagine why people languishing in that broken system struggle to restabilize their lives once homelesness has shattered their world.  I was fortunate that I still had my original Driver’s License that had been at the hospital with me. You often need one or more of these “personally identifying documents” in order to access any kind of other benefits like Link/EBT, LifeLine Phones, Unemployment etc.  I was able to recover and rebuild my personal identifying documents folder; many of our unhoused neighbors  are not so fortunate and are, therefore, left to languish.  

Please be cognizant also that you cannot even obtain a job without an ID and an address.  That needs to change as well.  Employers during this ongoing Pandemic keep insisting they cannot find employees.  Perhaps we as a Country should consider loosening the things REQUIRED to obtain a job in the first place.  People lacking compassion often scream at their unhoused neighbors they see panhandling saying: “Get a job!”  Oh, if only it were that easy.   I assure you - it is not.  There are far too many barriers to rebuilding your life once homelessness shatters you and your life.  Also, where are you going to shower for work? How will you get there? Where will you find clean clothes? All the things housed people take for granted every day become a near impossibility when you are unhoused.  You try and pick up the fragmented pieces of your former life and try to make it whole or back to a home again in this dangerously dysfunctional and deadly broken system you must now fight in every day just to survive- with no measurable help from an agency and no money. I double dog dare you to even try it.  It’s impossible to succeed and intentionally made that way by cruel design by our capitalist overlords.  For you see, they want the remaining workerbees slaving in the capitalist system daily to see the VISIBLE PLIGHT homelessness and poverty inflict on the unhoused so that you will still keep running on that joyless, corporate hamster wheel for them.  This is why most people refuse to make eye contact with the homeless beggar on the street; for it is too painful of a very near reminder of just how precarious most American lives are and how one setback could render THEM that unwashed guy/girl in the gutter.  They believe if they avert their eyes and refuse to see it, that their lives will be spared the wrath of penniless poverty.  If only the World were fair and actually worked that way.  I often think of the relevant Martin Luther King quote on this topic: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that  an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”        

 As May 2020 turned into the end of June 2020, I became increasingly curious as to WHY it was taking SO LONG for the “homeless helper agencies” to find the 200 of us remaining at the Motel 6 any type of housing outside of the temporary shelter at the hotel.  Like how hard could it be, I wondered? Just send in “all the Rapid Rehousing Experts” I had been reading about online and we should all be set in a matter of a week or two. Oh, grasshopper, how naive and stupid you were to believe that would be how things would go. Look at me then: so full of optimism, hope and certainty that the help I was always told would be there for me if I ever needed it in dire times would, indeed, arrive.  And look at me now: jaded, wiser, informed and very angry at the way those paid to do these jobs continue to fail We the Unhoused every day of every year in America. And people die as the direct result of this willful failure in these “helper Agencies” on the daily.  And Americans just chalk it up as necessary collateral damage in a deeply dysfunctional, UTTERLY NONPERFORMING homeless outreach system.  Because so long as it isn’t THEM in the gutter waiting on lifesaving affordable housing that hasn’t even been built yet to meet the crushing need for same, Americans are largely okay with this systemic failure - until and unless it happens to them or someone they love.  And that is our own moral failing that we must fully own.  I dedicated the next four (4) years of my life trying in vain to change this utterly broken homeless system yet the further down the rabbit hole I spiraled, the more corruption within the system at every level I could see.  It’s horrifying and soul-destroying.  The whole damn system is guilty as hell.     

Lockdowns ended at different times in different States in America.  Illinois was in lockdown for a full 70 days - until May 30, 2020.  And during the month of June 2020, I began to understand something horrendous about the magnitude of the  failure of the homeless outreach system and that was this: nobody from any area agency was coming to help us with housing or anything at all for that matter. I spoke with some who had been there in the hotel since the Lockdown began in March 2020 in IL (remember, I was a late arrival to the Hotel Program in early May 2020) and they said that NOBODY had come from ANY Agency the entire time they had been there (all three months) to assist with new permanent housing.  

I’m sorry, what?? 

This entire time I has presumed they would eventually get to my name on their list as they housed those who had arrived there before me.  Nope.  No one was coming to help us.  Literally no one.  

There were four (4) area Agencies “sponsoring the unhoused” at this Homeless Hotel Program: For purposes of not being sued for calling the bad ones out, I will refer to 3 of the 4 Agencies as Agency A, Agency B and Agency C along with Call for Help, Inc. The Program was being paid for by the local Regional Planning Agency of MetroEast area of Illinois - who obtained the funds from the State via the Federal government due to the Pandemic.  Putting Call for Help aside, because to MY knowledge sitting here today, I am not aware that they ever engaged in this fraudulent shell game I am henceforth about to describe for you.  By all measures, Call for Help is a legitimate nonprofit who truly helps those struggling with mental health issues in the MetroEast area of IL and they are a legitimately good organization.  Their workers literally spent the early days of the Pandemic doing their regular job of running a residential mental health treatment facility and then spent their nights combing the streets of MetroEast IL for abandoned people in distress with nowhere to go.  They are to be applauded, commended and again - if you feel inclined to give to a non-religious organization that helped so many of our most vulnerable people during the pandemic- please consider a donation to Call for Help in East St. Louis, IL (Phone number: 618-397-0968.)  For their Agency truly did help when a call was made or a person in distress found.  THAT is incredibly rare in the homeless outreach world in America today is all I can tell you.        

When the Lockdown was lifted on May 20, 2022, I suddenly realized that thereafter, each week, 3 dozen or so of the homeless folks being sheltered at the Hotel would be “kicked out” ostensibly for “not participating in the Program.” When I found the first evicted bunch crying in a huddle on the long outer road that ran alongside the Motel 6 with no transportation to get anywhere else yet under threat of arrest for trespassing by local police if they did not leave the hotel property, I demanded to know what was happening and why.  The program participants told me they were being forced into the nearest congregate homeless shelter in East St. Louis because their “time was up” with the Program.  What? Yes - apparently everyone was given only three (3) months to find alternative housing all on their own - without transportation to do so and with no help from housing caseworkers to navigate the complex housing system for the homeless in America.  This made NO SENSE to me whatsoever.  

So I used my political science degree and my legal training and emailed all area politicians and relevant persons and alerted them to the fact that the agencies that SHOULD HAVE BEEN HELPING manage this population at the homeless COVID hotel were not helping at all;  and, I informed them just how badly the tax dollars were being wasted, how no essential services were brought in and how people warehoused there did not even have masks to wear when masks were mandatory in all public spaces in IL.  I called out these Agencies failing us so badly in this email I sent.  And they apparently got a call from these local politicians because they had 1 meeting on the hotel back parking lot where they took everyone’s name, information and VIDEOTAPED themselves engaging with the homeless population there and “looking like” they were taking names, needs and going to surely find housing.  They recorded this “event” to falsely document that they were meeting with us and assisting us; and then never returned to ever help anyone find housing again after that 1 afternoon.  What a total sham.   Shame on them.  

It was bad enough that the these Agencies merely warehoused human bodies for 70 days during the Lockdown in 2020 without bringing any of the supportive essential supportive services in like detox, mental health workers, dieticians, employment agencies, doctors and nurses to treat medical issues AND TEST FOR COVID, etc; but to realize the Program also expected this vulnerable and truly struggling poverty population to find new alternative housing all on their own, without any transportation or assistance completing housing authority applications or rental applications was patently insane.  The unhoused folks, by nature, are a highly transient population and the IL government had one unique opportunity during this Pandemic to do meaningful intervention with this population and finally get everyone housed; and yet, IL epically failed to do so. I did not understand how such an overt failure was even possible by the State.    

It took me three (3) full months to realize “this homeless Hotel Program” was broken by design and a fraudulent shell game for these 3 unnamed herein, large, local nonprofits to get MORE grant money for allegedly helping the homeless during the Pandemic - and they kept all that money for themselves & their own bonuses. There is NO trickle-down effect in the homeless outreach grift game either. They keep it all.

Those government millions are not INTENDED to effectively rehouse anyone ever.      

How did it work? It went something like this: one of the three nonprofits would “homeless dump” roughly 3 dozen of the unhoused population from the hotel program into the local congregate shelter - let’s say, Agency 1 was Catholic Charities. THEN, a different one of the three nonprofits, let’s say St. Vincent de Paul of East STL Illinois, would sponsor those very same 3 dozen homeless people and return them back to the Hotel Program thereby getting credit for allegedly helping NEW homeless people in IL.  But in actuality, all these three (3) nonprofits did was move the same 200+ unhoused people in and out of that Hotel and back and forth between congregate shelters for a few days and then return them to the Hotel Program being NEWLY COUNTED by a different one of the nonprofits to ensure the nonprofit money train of Pandemic grant money did not stop for any of these three area (3) Agencies.  After all, it was the Pandemic, baby - and these nonprofit grifters knew exactly which levers to pull to keep the grant money flowing into their own bank accounts for their own bloated administrative salaries and bonuses - while they effectively used none of the money to help the unhoused in the Homeless Hotel Program ever. Shame on them.  Award them no points and refuse to EVER give to those three aforementioned nonprofit grifting Agencies ever again. You should never donate another dollar to any of them again - ever - for such an overt corrupt government grift money grab FOR THEMSELVES- when people were literally dying on the streets. As far as I am forevermore concerned, those 3 nonprofits, including Salvation Army to round out the 3 NAMED failed organizations- they should be strangled out of the government grant money grift game & all future private donations from Americans hoping their charitable dollars do good in the World - for they do not - not when handled & grifted for themselves by these Agencies. In the future - let THEM starve.  See how they like it…

Because any structure that merely “warehouses” the homeless population without bringing in the essential supportive essential services to treat their myriad underlying basic needs AND actually rehouse people is, by its very nature, going to be a tumultuous and failed expenditure.  The IL government had a once in a lifetime opportunity in this rare “Lockdown” to meet a transient-by-nature population, the area homeless folks, where they were and get them into detox, sober living, supportive living, halfway houses, and government-funded affordable housing via HUD/Section 8/Housing Authorities or any and all available programs.  

Yet they failed to do so. They failed to do anything substantive or helpful AT ALL for those most vulnerable during COVID (and after).

They merely warehoused human bodies for six months and then tossed everyone back out into permanent street homelessness or the violent congregate shelters.  This is an overt failure that must also be called out for what it is: unconscionable because it was intentional.  For you see, there is no future money-train in permanently housing those folks crammed into congregate shelters because these shelters get paid “per head count” in terms of future monetary rewards.  There is no demand for accountability from the government by way of “yes but, when we gave you the previous $2.5 million dollars, how many people did you effectively and permanently re-house with those grant dollars?” No accountability/measurable productive metrics ensures no one is ever housed by the shelter programs in America and, in fact, the system is so broken and backwards as to have a built-in disincentive to actually house a homeless person.  When more heads in the shelter beds equals more money in the pockets of those who run the homeless shelters, you can bet your buddies that they are committed to labeling the vast majority of homeless persons “treatment resistant” and “unable to be housed” so that they have a PERMANENT headcount in their shelters guaranteeing a permanent future money-train from the government by way of ongoing grants.  

These homeless nonprofits and agencies and HOAs are not the do-gooders that you think that they are.  They exist to line their own bank accounts with all that government cash while effectively rehousing no one ever.  They keep 50% for themselves and then “donate” 50% back into the political machine of reelection campaigns for our politicians- the same politicians who give them the money via the State budget. It is the most unlawful & covert transfer of wealth via taxpayer dollars from the government till, to the nonprofits and HOAs - with part of it then transferred back to the Governor who dispensed the $5 billion in the first place. Meanwhile, no one needing housing and in crisis ever gets rehomed. 

So, so corrupt is this government grift game. Be outraged America, please. Because the reality is HOUSES cure homelessness yet I’m on YEAR 4 of still waiting for a home - while all the government politicians and nonprofit agencies have all just gotten richer for doing nothing ever to rehouse people.

It’s one of the biggest scams in America committed by the nonprofits & HOAs while parading as the “saviors of the homeless.”  Please spare me your performative virtue signaling. Meanwhile, people die as the result of this intentional failure.  

The entire “nonprofit helper agencies system” in America needs to be audited and reimagined as there is entirely too much grifting and profiting off the poor in America.  This must stop.  And it’s up to you, my fellow Americans, to call this out for the fraud that it is and demand better from our government on behalf of your unhoused neighbors. The whole damn system is guilty as hell and it is time we take our Country back and stop letting Americans DIE for want of basic shelter.       

   You should also know that the largest unnamed nonprofit offender in this grift game forces the unhoused people to declare that they are hopeless addicts in need of the Saving Grace of Jesus otherwise they deny you services/shelter and assistance, too.  That’s unconscionably wrong and they need to be called out for his nonsensical and overt bad faith handling of the homeless populations they get millions to serve.  Need is need and help is help.  It should not matter the reason that brought you to the point of homelessness and standing at a shelter’s door; what matters is that all the agencies charged with helping the homeless and given government grant money to do so - must make their services available equally to all.  I know so many people from that Hotel Program who had to “fake being an addict” just to get into this nonprofit’s shelter so that they could make their way back to the Hotel Program which was far, far safer than any violent, congregant shelter ever is and definitely safer than “roughing it on the streets” is.  It should never have to come to that.  Shame on everyone involved in that fraudulent nonprofit homeless outreach shell game that profited from the pain of persons experiencing homelessness during a global pandemic.   May they have the kind of FUTURE via reduced donations and zero additional government grant money they deserve. 

And don’t think that well-intentioned people with a better plan and a strategy in place to genuinely change lives and get people back into homes hasn’t already happened many times over in Illinois and across America.  It has.  Invariably, someone like me eventually finds their way out of homelessness and becomes a fierce advocate for those still languishing in the broken homeless system and they find allies to join in solidarity with them and set up their own for-profit agency to do things the correct way.  But then, the failing the homeless nonprofit corporate behemoths come along and realize how incompetent the new agency on the block is making the intentionally-designed-to-fail system at The Big Nonprofit is making them look and they literally run the good guys who are results-oriented out of business.  The big failed nonprofits in the homeless grift game use their money, their leverage, their lawyers, their political influence and their lobbying power to crush anyone else who dares to come along and show the World that the cure to homelessness is putting people in actual homes and ensuring they have the necessary support to thrive there.  How dare anyone of good conscience come along and try to ruin their ⅓ monopoly on their government grift game of endless homelessness.  Actually solving homelessness will not be tolerated by those whose money-train is dependent on continued failures to house.  Don’t ask WHY the homeless are tented right in front of the large nonprofit’s massive congregate homeless shelter in Springfield IL.  Ask WHY none of the unhoused will dare set foot in such a violent, horrid hellhole; and also ask why no one is holding said Agency accountable for their ongoing systemic failures in the homelessness crisis yet continuing to throw millions in cash at that Agency yearly.  It doesn’t get any more corrupt than not only failing to do the job you are charged with doing but also squashing anyone else who comes along and proves that they have a plan to prove that THEY can.  ‘Merica.    

I also want to remark upon what a “Lifeline” those Obamaphones actually are to the destitute in society.  For the record, the “Lifeline Phones” were actually started by President George W. Bush but it was President Obama who added “internet data for free” to the phones so owners of such phones can access the medical group patient portals, use apps to arrange transportation, look for employment, keep in touch with family/friends via Facetime etc.  And the barriers to obtaining these phones are nonsensical and ridiculous.  It was only because I still had my State ID/DL and was able to get another copy of my social security card and enroll in IL Medicaid that I was able to secure one of these Lifeline Phones.  Again - the barriers to obtaining these phones are much too high for the very population they are intended to help.  I shared my Lifeline phone with SO MANY PEOPLE at that homeless hotel simply because they could not themselves apply for one due to lacking documents to prove their own eligibility.  The system is dysfunctional and broken beyond belief and needs to be overhauled immediately.  These Obama Phones are one of the first things stolen in all congregate homeless shelters because almost no one staying in such shelters can get access to one for themselves.  As such, many homeless people refuse to stay in such criminal congregate shelters and face the constant theft of their belongings - especially these Lifeline phones.  

My Lifeline phone became the tool through which I spent hours every day researching homelessness, life hacks/tips/tricks/fixes when suddenly homeless, scanning for additional resources, looking for additional Agencies I had not already called to try and access housing or help or food or really any kind of supportive services at all. Without this phone, none of what ended up saving my life would have been possible.  Please do not mock these “Obamaphones” or this Program or make fun of the participants of this Program.  I have heard every slur leveled at those of us who have these phones and the only thing I can think to say to such mocking is this: “Shame on you for begrudging someone with nothing, the one and only thing they do have that might help save their life and eventually bring them back to something. Where is your morality and your compassion and your empathy?” Kindness costs you nothing but meanness in the face of dire human suffering costs you every ounce of personal integrity you THINK you might have.  

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: I have entire NOTEBOOKS filled with my notes of which agencies/churches/government offices etc that I called during May/June/July 2020 and nearly every single call was never returned or was never even answered. Everyone ALWAYS tells you: “Call local churches when you’re in need - they will help you.”  This is patently false misinformation and an abject waste of time.  Out of over 40 churches called in MetroEast IL, only two  helped me during this timeframe.  The Caseyville Food Pantry ladies helped me and the Church of the Living Word in Caseyville IL who held a “food pantry outreach” for the Community every Saturday morning during the Summer of 2020 also helped measurably.  Having no way to cook or store food, the Caseyville Food Pantry volunteers literally cooked hardboiled eggs for me to eat (protein is desperately needed by hypoglycemics like me!) and they made intentional efforts to gather food that I could actually eat. They also gave me a styrofoam cooler to keep in my hotel room to help keep the cooked eggs and other food cold with the free ice from the hotel ice machine. They also donated multiple gas cards to me so that I could continue to get to area grocery stores and other area resources via car etc.   Also, the Food Pantry at the Living Word Church was held every Saturday and I ferried several Moms/kids from the Hotel DV Program there each week to get their own rations.  These folks showed up whenever called and they definitely played an important role in keeping people fed who had experienced homlessness and job loss during Lockdown 2020.  Again: If you wonder if there is a church in existence doing the work that Jesus would do to serve the poor and help the hungry and homeless - these two churches/food pantries are standout stars among all other churches in the MetroEast IL. They should be applauded and any year-end donations you might think to give to such churches I can assure you these two are indeed worthy recipients for their service to others truly saved lives during the Pandemic.   Food scarcity was very real for so many during these dark and dire early days of the Pandemic and those who rose to the challenge to help those most in need - they should be acknowledged and recognized for a job so very well done amidst unimaginable uncertainty and chaos. 

   

ENTER STAGE LEFT - REDDIT:  The subtitle of this Pandemic Memoir you are reading indicates that amidst all of these systemic GOVERNMENT failures and snafus during my Pandemic Year 2020, social media saved my life.  You likely wonder HOW such a thing came to pass.  It’s actually pretty simple.  Prior to 2020, I was not on Twitter or Reddit.  I was aware of these platforms but had never previously used either.  Until one day, when still endlessly searching for “homeless tips and resources” on my Lifeline phone, I came across a Reddit posting about being homeless.  If you are unfamiliar with Reddit (as I was) it takes some getting used to - especially if you’re older like me.  First, you must find what is called “subreddits” or topics that might interest you.  For example, if you are from Chicago IL, you might follow the various subreddits regarding Chicago.  And if you are in the engineering field, you might follow subreddits dedicated to that topic.  Naturally, subreddits for cat videos abound on Reddit and that ALONE makes it truly worthwhile.  Need a little happy/silly/laughter in your day? Dial into r/catbongos or r/catswithjobs or r/Catswhoyell - and you get the idea….  

The first thing I noticed about Reddit though when I first found it in July 2020 was that the Redditors who populate the platform are, generally speaking, uncommonly polite and friendly to one another - at least on the subreddits I frequented.  I instantly was drawn towards how amazingly kind and helpful Redditors were to each other on the r/homeless subreddit and I wanted to be part of that “compassionate caring community” somehow.  I wanted to participate and be part of the people of Reddit who freely give of their own knowledge and wisdom, education and experience to help another person who has lost their way in some life happenstance - for it was amazing to behold.  

I do realize many people talk about how “toxic and awful” Reddit is but I find that is largely dependent upon the subreddits you frequent.  Sure - you want to argue about politics all day on some toxic mess of a badly moderated politics subreddit - I’m sure you can do that and find all the madness and meanness you seek.  But I was not there.  I was submerged in the “helpful subreddits” and what I witnessed there among Gen Z and the Millenials TAUGHT ME that the hope for this Country truly rests with the younger generation now.  For it was on Reddit I first saw someone APOLOGIZE to a fellow Redditor when offense was taken where none was intended.  What a revelation! An online community where people are polite, respectful of each other and genuinely trying to help each other through this thing called life.  I was immediately engaged and enthralled in this online sub-Community known as Reddit.  

So on this particular day back in July 2020, my first day on Reddit, I stumbled upon r/homeless and found a literal treasure trove of lifesaving information for anyone experiencing homelessness.  In addition to what is called the “comprehensive guide” and “homeless wiki” for links and resources you can also post individual questions regarding your personal life circumstance to the subreddit.  Most all questions are already answered on the megathread listing resources etc but if you can’t find your particular situation or, you just need some moral support because homelessness is soul-crushingly terrifying - they offer that there, too.   It’s a supportive community made up largely of other homeless people and formerly homeless people who managed to find their own way out as well as some homeless advocates.  It’s a really good place to land when your life has been turned upside down by sudden and first time homelessness- trust me.    

For it was there on Reddit that I first learned I likely would have died in my vehicle if I had been left to languish there much longer and had not been rescued by John with Call for Help, Inc Why? Because you can actually get a blood clot if sleeping in your vehicle “the wrong ways” - which, I initially did, for too many nights than I care to now admit.  It was there that I also learned you can actually die of carbon monoxide poisoning if you don’t vent your windows when sleeping in your car - yes, even in Winter time.  I had literally no idea just how fatal car dwelling could have been when I was suddenly thrust into it in April 2020. I stupidly spent my car-living time worrying about being ambushed by crazies with guns and what would I do if the police DID bang on my window at 2am to intentionally terrorize me. (It’s what cops do best.) This r/homeless subreddit as well as others like r/almosthomeless r/urbancarliving and r/legal for eviction assistance can and will Literally.Save.Your.Life.     

Upon first stumbling upon Reddit, I read for two days straight soaking in all the information and studiously taking notes.  By now (July 2020)I had fully realized no cavalry was coming to the Hotel Program and no one was coming to save us or rescue us and that if I wanted to live and be housed again one day - it was all up to me.  I researched so much and called so many places that I went cross-eyed.  Sadly, many of the USUAL suggestions helpful Redditors give people facing sudden homelessness were nonfunctional during the first year of the Pandemic in 2020 because literally no one was working in America. But Reddit also had a long list of tips, tricks, life hacks, protips and recommendations for saving your own life in every imaginable circumstance.  For example, most towns do not have a “Safe Park Parking Lot”where persons experiencing homelessness living in their cars can safely park without being hassled by the police and forced to move or be arrested.  So you have to learn WHERE you can go that you will be safe - FROM THE POLICE - who are allegedly hired to protect and serve us.  There’s another broad lie Americans really need to come to terms with as being fully false.  Cops are not your friends - no matter the circumstance you find yourself in. Trust me on that much.  During 2020, such safe parking places were limited to hospital parking lots, any hotels that remained opened for business  and large apartment complexes without assigned parking where you and your existence in your car could “blend in” and not be noticed.  Reddit Pro-Tip:Never park where you will be the only car.  And if you are FEMALE alone in your car, never park in a remote area you THINK will be safe because it LOOKS deserted.  Walmarts USED TO BE a safe haven for car and van dwellers but that all stopped when they started closing at 8pm during the lockdowns.  

If you are reading this and you are as outraged as I am that every town in America does not have one of these “Safe Park Parking Lots'' where those forced into living in their cars can safely park and access essential services and get connected to housing caseworkers, showers, laundry, and food assistance etc, please petition your local Alderman or City Council to BUILD ONE.  So often our unhoused neighbors have lost their agency, their voice, their courage and their sense of anyone ever truly being committed to helping them because of how broken the homeless outreach system actually is.  Be. Their. Voice. Demand safety for them in their cars in your town with a Safe Parking Lot Program and begin to demand accountability from your leaders who are liars about why homelessness perpetuates in your town.   Be the voice so many of us lose when so deeply traumatized by sudden-onset first time homelessness.     

After reading and taking notes for days on Reddit, I noticed something abhorrent.  There were lots of Redditors on different subreddits talking about being evicted during Lockdown 2020 but BEFORE the CDC Federal Eviction Moratorium was enacted on September 1, 2020. This was July 2020 and it was already happening to too many people.   Having a background in the law, and specific knowledge of eviction defense and housing law, I began to help fellow Redditors avoid being evicted.  NONE of the fellow Redditors knew I had not one dime to my name at the time I helped them - for I had not yet posted about my own dire circumstance.  I was just happy to have something USEFUL and HELPFUL to do and to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to those about to lose their home during a global pandemic.  I reasoned that if I could prevent what happened to me from happening to even one other person -I certainly would do my level best to do so.  All told, I saved dozens of Redditors from losing their rentals during July and August 2020.  And every time I did so, I thought of a specific person and gave her a special private salute just for her.  If she is reading this now, know that I decided to heal from you and the damage your malice caused me by becoming nothing like you.  And it is all well within my soul.   

I also drafted legal letters and simple pro se Motions for routine legal filings for people on other legal issues and I absolutely loved doing this legal work for other Redditors.  I felt useful again and able to meaningfully contribute to society again.  That matters once society has written you off as a dead woman walking to her certain death in the broken homeless system.  

And thus and so, one day on Reddit I began posting parts of  my own terrifying ordeal about being medically vulnerable with Huntington’s and a TBI and a shattered left knee and my health declining rapidly due to poor nutrition and experiencing “almost homelessness” in the Hotel Program.  By August 2020, I had become so weak from my ongoing and untreated medical issues that I was in a wheelchair and could no longer drive.  That problem then just escalated as food became nonexistent for me and I began to have daily blood sugar emergencies because my hypoglycemia was exacerbated tenfold.  I am a hypoglycemic who can eat no table sugar.  I can eat fruit but not candy bars etc.  It is no exaggeration to say that I often went DAYS without food.  For even the sandwiches from IL St. Vincent de Paul had stopped coming by August 2020. So with my health in rapid decline with those issues as well as longhaul COVID pulmonary issues and knowing the “helpers” charged with housing and helping us were never going to do so, I grew more frantic and turned to Reddit for support and advice.   

And just like that, kind Redditors helped me right back.  It is unfortunate that one of my earliest postings was on r/suicidewatch which is a subreddit for people feeling suicidal or hopelessly lost in despair.  Up until my post there, I had never once had the inclination to hurt myself or anyone else EVER in my many decades in this life.  But things were bleak and growing bleaker by the day.  And so I told my story on that subreddit about being so hungry I wanted to die because I just couldn’t take it anymore.  And I mentioned other poverty-related struggles, too, that I was facing which are adjacent to the plight of being nearly homeless.  

And just like that - some kind internet stranger messaged me privately on Reddit and said and did the single most helpful thing anyone had ever done for me up to that point in my newfound crisis: She said “I’m so very sorry for all the horrible things that have happened to you that no one has ever apologized to you for even though they should have.  You didn’t deserve that.  ANY of it.  And you are valuable and your life matters.  And absolutely NO ONE should be experiencing despondent despair for want of a basic meal.  So please let me order you your favorite pizza.” And she did.  I told her the pizza place near the homeless hotel that I thought would deliver and she phoned it in for me.  I will NEVER, for as long as I live, forget the taste of that pizza mixed with the salt of my own grateful tears streaming down my face as I ate, while crying in gratitude, that first HOT meal I had had in seven long (7) weeks!              

It’s truly amazing what one random act of kindness and one good meal can do for a person’s thought process and ability to better <manage> their own crisis.  I began to tell my story on other subreddits and more help poured in during August 2020.  As I helped Redditors avoid homelessness, other Redditors helped me stay alive while fighting the broken homeless system and slowly starving.  Redditors encouraged me to make an Amazon Wish List so that they could send me food and clothes.  By this point, my 1 pair of shorts were so big due to my extreme weight loss that I could stand in one leg of them.  Redditors sent additional clothes and food from Amazon to my Hotel and, again, I cried out of sheer disbelief and gratitude that total strangers on the internet cared about me and my tattered life.  One Redditor also gave me cash because he thought it was “utterly insane that the State of Illinois had left me wholly penniless during the entirety of the Pandemic during Summer 2020 because of how dysfunctional IDES is.”  

 A word of warning and admonishment here if you are reading this and think you can scam the good-hearted people of Reddit with some fictional tale of woe.  You can’t.  Their scam-meter is set so high that they will flag you as a scammer if you even try.  I hesitated to even mention the fact that someone sent me cash for fear that readers of this Memoir would try to swindle the good people of Reddit.  But know that you generally will get called out for attempting to scam on Reddit as Reddit relies on something called “karma points” to show that you are a contributing member of Reddit as much as you might be a Redditor in need.  If you don’t have the accumulated Reddit karma, you cannot even access many of the subreddits where people do help others there - financially and otherwise.  The entire intention of the “helper sub-Reddits” is for it to be an intentional community of reciprocity and people helping each other any way that they can. If you show up there simply to TAKE from kind people - you will simply be banned.  They also have high level hacker type computer geniuses that can track fake accounts and multiple accounts by the same person.  But more than that: don’t exploit kind people who are willing to help others just because you think you can.  Go elsewhere with your narcissistic grifting hustle and abuse some other community.  Reddit deserves a million gold stars for saving my life in the Summer of 2020.  I have tried to give back as much as I was given but I will always know that I owe them a debt I can never repay.  It is my hope that this Memoir that acknowledges just how much Reddit saved my life will demonstrate my sincere, heartfelt gratitude to everyone who helped me in 2020.  You absolutely saved a life and I am hopeful that my testimony herein will be the key to someone else’s survival too. 

My time at the “homeless hotel” during Spring/Summer 2020 was indeed filled with heartbreak and horribly hard times. The hardcore street homeless population also housed there yet left without transportation, foods, meds or any supportive services became more volatile with each passing day.  It’s no exaggeration to say that I stayed behind my locked door of my motel room most days, 24/7.  This was in part because I still feared my abuser from St. Louis as Caseyville IL is entirely too close to St. Louis and my abuser/attacker is a determined and demented monster who the law refuses to hold accountable.  

It is worth mentioning that he did actually end up finding me at this hotel and terrorizing me there and causing massive property damage to my car such that I almost lost my place in this hotel program because of HIS criminal behavior.  Just how much of my life and my sense of safety ANYWHERE is this deranged idiot going to be allowed to take from me? As it turns out? Quite a lot.  But that’s how the law works for victims of domestic violence: the cops ALWAYS side with the abuser. I think this is, in part, because they are too often domestic abusers themselves and because they are generally men who want to “buddy up” with the male abuser in the equation.  This failure in America by the cops of so many in genuine danger of violent abusers also needs to be called out and held to account by you, my fellow Americans.  But until and unless we dispense with qualified immunity for cops, things will never change in this regard and they will be as bad as they ever were back in the 1950s when cops routinely presented to DV calls just to tell the beaten wife “to learn how to better respect her husband.”  It’s an abomination and moral failure that America has not progressed any further from that mentality in 60+ years.    

But fortunately and ultimately the hotel chose not kick me out because of my abuser and the drama-trauma he caused there and that is largely because his criminal bad acts were overshadowed by the fact that I am a rule follower and a law abiding person who is not a drug addict or drunk causing problems anywhere I go.  The owner and staff at the hotel also liked me because I would often intervene to de-escalate certain situations at the hotel among the hardcore street homeless people there having various issues or crises.  Very few people see a volatile schizophrenic in the middle of a mental breakdown and decide they will be the one to try and help attenuate the situation.  But I did.  Quite often, in fact.  Because if not me, then who? Either we as Americans have a moral obligation  to help each other during times of crisis or we don’t.  And if we abdicate that moral responsibility then we descend into nothing more than a self-centered, pointless people.  And that is NOT the America I know that we collectively are.  So, I help where I see a need and know that I have something useful to contribute - whatever that may be.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone in America responded in kind to the aching need of those suffering in America right now?   

I will likely never forget the night I had to handle a man 3x my size amidst a psychotic break.   He was in the hallway screaming at 2am and the petite, female night clerk was terrified and about to call the police.  Knowing as I do that cops have zero value-added to situations involving persons experiencing a medical or mental health crisis, I pleaded with her to let me handle it and she did - primarily because she had seen me successfully intervene in different similar scenarios previously there.  The man had broken a curtain rod off the wall in his motel room and was jamming it in his casted leg and screaming in the hallway about the intolerable itching all over his casted leg.  Previously having endured an open compound fracture of my right leg in 2009 myself, I imagined he was experiencing the extreme itching that casts can cause right before they are supposed to come off.  I got him back in his room and asked if he wanted me to take his cast off.  He screamed “No! That will let all the additional roaches out of the cast! Can’t you see the thousands of them all over the outside of my cast now?” 

Oh.  I see…  

This was something entirely different and he was a paranoid schizophrenic without his medications for days on end and was having a severe psychotic break.  I called the non-emergency number for EMS and they came and took him to the hospital.  See? No cops required.         

Also, memorable was the night I had to diplomatically negotiate with mental meth-heads banging on my motel window at at 3am and INTENTIONALLY choose AGAIN to not respond to this circumstance by calling the police.  Because of my abuser finding me at this area motel,  I was relocated within the hotel to a different room that was directly in view of the hallway cameras.  (Previously I was in a blind corner where he easily accessed the property via a back door near my room.)  On this particular night, I awoke in my new-to-me room to someone frantically banging on my first-floor window.  Any other person would call the front desk and demand they handle it and call the police.  But by this point in my journey of being unhoused, I had come to learn just how hopelessly inept cops are in almost any scenario requiring soft people skills, effective communication or de-escalation techniques of volatile people.  

And thus and so, on this particular July night, I opened my window curtain to find two twenty-somethings, one male and one female, frantically trying to communicate with me AND break into my window.  I opened the window an inch and began speaking with them through the screen. They informed me they had been in my very room weeks prior but had been jailed for drug possession.  And they also told me that their drugs and drug-making paraphernalia were still in my room and they wanted it back. I tried to assure them they were gravely mistaken and I honestly assumed they, too, were just mentally fragile folks having a mental moment like the guy with the “cast roaches.”  But they INSISTED their drugs were in my room and would not leave until they retrieved them. I was very wary of allowing them in but I also fully realized they were not going to leave until they absolutely knew there were no drugs left in the room.  Hello - it’s a hotel. There’s housekeeping between guests and there was simply no way their pipe-dream of their drug stash still being in the room was remotely plausible.  But I was going to have to prove it to them to get them to leave.  I finally told the guy of the couple to go to the far outskirts of the hotel parking lot and I would let the girl in my room to prove to her the drugs were not there.  They agreed and she came in.  This second hotel room I had been moved to had 2 beds in it, instead of one as my first room had had, and the girl went right to the bed I was not using to sleep in and that had many of my belongings on it.  She got down on the floor and began pulling all kinds of pans and meth cooking chemicals and whatnot out from under the unused bed in my room.  Oh. My. God.   She then went to the mirror that was hanging on the wall and yanked it down from the wall.  On the backside of that mirror were perhaps 50 small baggies of drugs all stapled to the backside of the mirror.  She grabbed them all, pocketed them, offered me one for being “so sweet about it all” (I declined) and then went merrily on her way.  

I sat there in utter shock for the next three hours realizing that had cops come in my room and found the drugs or paraphernalia under the bed, I would have been arrested for all of it - even though I had no knowledge that any of that was in the room.  Again, no cops - no terrible ending filled with injustice occurring to marginalized people.  But you can rest assured I henceforth thereafter now ALWAYS check every part of every crevice of every hotel room I may enter.  

Was it the “right choice” to not involve the police in that particular incident? Definitely. Cops generally have no ability to discern who is part of a drug scene and who has no knowledge of what the hell is actually happening when someone in such a scene is standing there clueless nonetheless.  Cops are, generally speaking, not at all helpful in any situation that their hard lack of “soft people skills” causes to become exponentially worse.

You may sense a strong “cop hate vibe” with me and I would like to explain: prior to this experience I was a privileged white woman who had only ever had positive interactions with police during my lifetime.  But the minute you become unhoused, you become their “perfect victim” to terrorize and they are never there to actually HELP you: they are there to either a) arrest you on bogus charges b) give you loitering tickets they know you cannot pay which will result in you being jailed or c) kick you while you are down and trash all of what may remain of your belongings in this life.  So, if you think my cop hate came out of nowhere - check your privilege.  You’ve just never seen how ugly and violent they truly are.         

However, having said all of that, I would like to state that the Caseyville IL Police Department were nothing but kind to me on the two interactions I did have with them during my stay in the MetroEast IL during Summer 2020.  Also, I constantly observed them “out in the community” doing legit acts of kindness and heroism when they thought no one was watching.  One such incident was when a man in a powered wheelchair got stuck in some mud trying to ride across the street in his chair.  I watched a Caseyville Police Officer literally pull over his squad car and push the man safely across the street and remove the accumulated mud from the wheels of the man’s wheelchair.  I also watched them heroically respond to a horrible “car flip” multi-vehicle traffic accident in the heat of that Summer during a raging pandemic.  A Caseyville Police Officer also helped me one day when I was having an absent seizure while driving.  Fortunately, it happened almost as soon as I turned on the outer road to leave the motel and he had been parked at the nearby Cracker Barrel.   He saw me swerving and immediately came to my rescue.  He got me back to my motel room, parked my car safely on the lot and called twice after the fact to ensure that I was okay.  So, I have to give a huge caveat to my obvious cop-hate.  The Caseyville PD are, from all of my observations, generally decent people who truly try to help the citizens of Caseyville IL.  As for the Edwardsville IL cop who gave me a cellphone ticket WHILE I WAS DIALING 911 because I was experiencing a medical emergency and I knew that I needed help, all I will say is just know that he and his family are never in my daily prayers nor will they ever be. I truly hope he has the kind of day he deserves On.Every.Shift. that he works for the rest of his natural life.        

But generally speaking, as for my time spent at the “homeless hotel” in Summer 2020, I now look back on that time mostly fondly - save for a few bad days/incidents.   Yes, it was unconscionable that the local “helper agencies” charged with helping us failed everyone there so tragically and there were many horrid things that happened that were entirely preventable: like me experiencing “shock hunger” and losing 39 lbs in 3 months as a result of that shock hunger and then having all of my hair fall out due to the related massive malnutrition. Also, living 7 weeks without one HOT meal because my IL Pandemic EBT benefits only buy cold or uncooked foods and I had no proper way to cook; yet, the EBT cards in Chicago IL have the Restaurant Meal Program Benefit attached to them that allow for hot foods while the rest of the State is denied such essential and nourishing benefits is fully unforgivable.   Again, on this I hold Governor Pritzker entirely responsible for this EBT expanded benefit failure.  Restaurants were doing carryout meals in Caseyville IL in Summer 2020 and that expanded benefit being available to EVERYONE throughout the State of IL would have made all the difference to my situation in Summer 2020.   Instead, I had to accept constant hunger as a silent, dark passenger who was just with me every night as I fell asleep. Shame on any system that allows this to be the lived reality for those most vulnerable in our society.    

If I am honest, I will tell you that I felt utterly unqualified to do any of the surreal things I was forced to do and endure during Summer 2020 amidst the raging Pandemic, yet I opted to do it all anyway - giving it all my level best.  This book is, in part, dedicated to my brave veteran father primarily because of how his lifetime role-modeling & teachings elevated me that Pandemic year to become someone I never thought I knew I could be and to meet these most humbling moments of my life with grace, dignity and courage.

Yet to be fair, I cannot take full credit for giving the best of me at one of the worst times of my life during Pandemic 2020.  Out of sheer necessity and will to survive, I became a “Redditor” and figured out how to survive based on those who had gone before me and were also betrayed by the system and had wisdom to share on Reddit.   Without Reddit, I surely would have died. FULL STOP.  Read that again: Without Reddit, I surely would have died in 2020.  I owe the kind internet strangers of Reddit a debt I can never repay.  I now stand on the shoulders of those Reddit giants who went before me through first-time homelessness and I stand in solidarity with them with this Memoir and offer my own “personal roadmap for how to survive one of the worst things that can ever happen to you in America” as a type of dedication to the Reddit folks who helped me.  I do not need to reinvent their already amazing wheel already existing on Reddit- I simply need to point you in that right direction called Reddit in case this same tragedy ever happens to you and your life.  For I firmly believe that when you escape the fire and trials of life, you have a moral obligation to carry water to those still consumed by the flames.  Perhaps my challenges and harrowing close-calls can now be added to the Reddit braintrust on homelessness and become, in its own way, part of the key to someone else’s survival guide in the future should we not fundamentally come together as a people in this broken Country to now, at long last, fundamentally change how we address homelessness in America and finally fix this problem once and for all.  

And “the fix” is really rather straightforward: housing fixing homelessness.  More affordable housing residential units - especially handicapped accessible ones - instead of tax breaks given to millionaire developers to build more six figure condos needs to be the ONLY type of residential building we approve until every American who needs a safe home in America, has one.      

My hard times and heartbreak at the Homeless Hotel ultimately came to an end in September 2020 when I entered a nearby assisted living facility for post-COVID physical, respiratory, and nutritional therapies.  I bet you think that’s got to be a good turn of my wheel of misfortune that year, right? Oh, grasshopper, how naive we all were….Up next - Chapter 2 entitled:  Wounded, Witless and WITAFacility?