COVID and Housing Insecurity- an anonymous student story

A student describes her family’s difficult summer.

Anonymous

 

When COVID-19 began, many things began to change in my life. I wasn’t allowed out as much and I had to go to school from home. My parents thankfully kept working, but my sister’s college was going to be very pricey. My family made the hard decision to rent out our house on Air BnB for the whole summer to make sure we had enough money for my sister’s housing and classes. It was a source of income that would directly be for her studies. With this, we had to leave our home in the month of June. It was very hard finding a home to rent at that time of year, since they were all too expensive or already taken. 

As we desperately looked for a place to stay for 4 people and 3 dogs, we ended up moving into a bedroom at my parents’ friend’s house. It was difficult not to be able to have my own space, and being I found it hard to adjust to the lack of privacy and freedom compared to my old house. Since we were only allowed to stay for a month, soon we were yet again looking for a place to stay. We then got another room at my aunt’s house, but that was only for only a few weeks then we had to leave.

At this point, I was upset about having to pack and unpack all the time. After moving yet again, we found ourselves in a terrible basement, but we had to make it work since we only had to stay there for 3 more weeks. I found myself crying myself to sleep. I just wanted to be able to go home, but we couldn’t at all. I’m not spoiled, but having to go through this experience really hurt me. 

Thankfully after the weeks passed, we were finally able to go back home, my older sister was dropped off at LIU and, my parents promised to never do it again, as they saw how hurt I was. COVID-19 taught me to see both sides of this world because some people have to live like that every day and I only had to live like that for 3 months.