A Homeless Street Sense Vendor’s Housing Dilemma

David Serota

Finding an apartment is one thing; resolving all the ifs and buts is another.

 

Recently I found an apartment where the landlord is willing to work with me. The rent is $900 a month. BUT here’s the thing: I have to raise the first month’s rent by Feb. 1.

 

I already obtained $900 through Friendship Place for the security deposit. So now, unless I sell 600 papers at $2 a piece for a profit of $900, I may have to forfeit this housing opportunity.

 

Then there’s the issue of my stuff, which has been at my father’s home, BUT he is about to move, so I have to find storage immediately for my possessions.

 

Since August I’ve been staying at hotels, which I pay for by working part time and selling Street Sense. I’ve been paying $55 a night (sometimes even treating myself to the Comfort Inn, like the Ritz for me); I would save hundreds of dollars each month by renting my own apartment.

 

Luckily I found a landlord willing to work with me. I’m a communications technician by trade, BUT right now the project I was working on has come to a stop; work is at a standstill. Even when I was working, I had to go to Sterling, Va., at a cost of $15 round trip for trains and busses.

 

I was offered a place to stay at a church, BUT you have to be there at 7 p.m., and that is the peak time for my sales. Given my entrepreneurial spirit, I set up a Square account, which would allow me to take credit cards for Street Sense. BUT to use Square I would need technology that my outdated phone lacks.

 

I write poetry and have thought about selling it BUT the cost of publishing a bound book, using the machine at Martin Luther King Library is prohibitive. Online publishing is also expensive.

 

I could do this, BUT then there’s that problem. I could do that, BUT then there’s this problem. There is always a BUT. It all adds up to a homeless Steet Sense vendor’s dilemma on housing.

 


Issues |Housing


Region |Washington DC

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