As I sat down with “Trese” to learn her story, I watched her pull up her calculator to begin doing the math. “When I was pregnant with my son, I signed up for a voucher. I had $320 income from DSHS, and my rent was $275.” She paused to key in the numbers. “We had $45 left to spend for the month. Half the time we didn’t have our lights on because we couldn’t afford to pay for it.”
Trese recounts how she grew up in a middle-class typical working family—she had never even heard of rental assistance until adulthood—but family dysfunction led her to place herself in foster care at age 15. She moved out a month before her 18th birthday, still a senior in high school. She worked fast food jobs to make ends meet, sometimes living in a shed, or in a trailer in someone’s yard, or couch-surfing with roommates. “I didn’t have TV or phone, couldn’t afford any services. Everything was rent and gas money.”
Trese remembers the shame and the stigma of living in poverty. “Back in the day, you had actual food stamps, and you’d get the looks from other people at the store. Or driving a beat-up car and getting looks from other drivers, and cops pull you over more often for car problems. Things that all cost money to fix.”
Trese finally got a voucher when her son was a few months old. “It was a godsend. It allowed me to go back to school, and I was eventually able to become self-sufficient and become a homeowner.” She got her AA in business management and has worked in social services ever since. Today, she uses her lived experience to help clients through their own situations. “You have to have that compassion to do this work, because otherwise you’d burn out,” she says. “I like to be able to reassure folks that we’ll figure it out together.”