Hi there! My name is Raven, and you might recognize me from the Andytown by the beach or from one of your other favorite cafes. My wife Evee and I have been struggling through this pandemic more so than many, and we need your help.

 

Growing up as a trans girl with autism and born into what was (at the time) the poorest zip code in Contra Costa County, my parents were methamphetamine addicts and violent gang members, in and out of prison. It took conviction and empathy to raise myself such that I have the community values and warm personality I have today. But I had a big hand from Evee's sweet heart! She and I met when we were both in kindergarten, and we were inseparable by 3rd grade. We struggled through our undersupported mental illness and developmental issues together. Once we sorted out our genders and both transitioned, our love became clear to us, and we've been together through better or worse ever since.

However, in 2012, we hit a significant roadblock. My parents were anti-medicine and anti-vaccine, and had used some janky 80s-90s era exemptions to get around vaccinating me for school. However, as autistic and traumatized as I was, I was unaware of missing this standard, and it never occurred to me I might not be protected.

 

I began to develop head-cold-like symptoms in early 2011 and was encouraged by my family to just "wait it out." By the time I arrived at the county medical center, I had been suffering from constant pain and bloody nasal discharge for over a year. I was dismissed without a successful diagnosis by county medical. It was another quarter of a year before I, afraid I was dying, went to an ENT out of my own pocket and was diagnosed with a highly out-of-control long-term sinus infection.

 

I was immediately hospitalized, as secondary infections and initial sepsis had already set in. Unfortunately, I also did not have my childhood vaccinations, so the sudden sense of disorientation and doom I had been feeling was caused by, among other things, the onset of bacterial meningitis. The times immediately surrounding my stay in the ICU are a blur to me, school/work stress and trauma had already led to me having a heart attack before this, but the suffering was incomparable.

 

What I do know is that my medical team saved my life. However, it was 2012, and we were not as knowledgeable about the human body as we are now. The vast amount of antibiotics required to save me devastated my gut biome while that part of our biology was very misunderstood, and the brain damage was a significant factor in my choice to drop out of my classes as a mathematics major. While I still live with many overwhelming changes since then, for the next eight years I recovered better than my medical team and I could have hoped for, and I did what I could to move on and build a life with my love.

 

 

In 2017 my grandfather died. He was the only responsible and empathetic adult in my childhood, so both Evee and I felt a responsibility to his memory, left everything behind, and moved into his old home outside Grass Valley, CA, to take care of my grandmother. Totally isolated (it was a 20-minute drive to the nearest township, and we didn't own a car), we did what we could for her. Still, violence and gunboat diplomacy was just as much part of the fabric of my family as it was when I was a child, and after a long campaign of terror, we were run off the property by my uncle with a shotgun so that he could steal my grandmother's jewelry collection. Only the timely arrival of a friend from the Bay in his van saved us, and we could not even get all our documents from the house.

 

After this, we returned to Contra Costa with nothing and were quickly driven to homelessness. I had been some flavor of houseless most of my life, living out of my car before I lost my license or jumping from couch to couch. But this was the first time Evee was houseless and the first time either of us was genuinely HOMEless, sleeping in parks and trying not to freeze, nowhere to keep our few clothes or our food. We had both been working full-time since we got back, but the wages in Contra Costa were too low for us to make ends meet when starting from scratch, and we just fell more and more behind. We both left our jobs for better-paying ones here in the city and then moved into a cozy concrete niche on Cole and Page, where we could get mostly out of the wind, stay sober, and do what we could to not bother people.

 

After a long and painful climb, we finally got into an overpriced SRO, then a room in the Sunset. However, COVID-19 hit right as we found our new stability. As you can imagine, I am very, VERY vulnerable to the damage caused by COVID-19. And early in 2020, Evee was helping a visibly sick customer against her will and was infected by what my doctor calls "presumed COVID-19" because proper testing was not established yet. She was afraid it was COVID, I didn't take her concerns seriously enough, and as I cared for her, I was infected as well.

My presumed COVID-19 infection walked back my recovery by at least five years. I survived without hospitalization, thankfully, but I was right back in the biological prison of my own failing body, a trap I thought I had left behind for some time. Every morning my experience is again characterized primarily by extreme suffering and thoughts of giving up, and my physical endurance is that of someone decades older. Simple physical wear that I would have healed up over a day off before hangs with me, stacking on itself and causing compounding musculoskeletal failures. And every day, with my reduced immune capacity and vulnerability, I have to wonder if today is the day COVID comes back around to finish the job. And every day Evee (who is herself more vulnerable than most due to BMI and developmental issues) works or goes out, she has to wonder if she'll be the one to infect me, and that weighs heavily on her.

 

Up until this point, we've been able to survive on a combination of my work at Andytown (which has so far provided me with a much safer and understanding working environment that I could find elsewhere in the Sunset), Evee working when cases were low enough, and assistance like the SF-Marin Food Bank and the SF Eviction Moratorium. However, much of that COVID targeted aid is coming to an end, and we have felt like we have few options left to us, especially with February being the last month the state assists our rent. With cases still higher than they were during several previous peaks, many preventive measures being walked back, and the vaccine not offering me the same level of protection it does most, going back to "normal" is not a safe choice for either of us. But obviously, homelessness would be much worse for our safety and wellbeing, so we're reaching out for help.

 

This is our story, but this isn't just us. One in five transgender people have experienced homelessness, a quarter of homeless people are disabled, post-bacterial-infection fatigue is poorly understood overall, and 70% of homeless people in San Francisco lived here before they lost their homes.

If you're willing to help us, the money will go primarily to securing the first, last and deposit for a new place. We may also use it to cover medical expenses, food costs, or recovering lost documents if enough aid is available. Thank you so much for your time reading this; I appreciate you hearing my story! I hope that it has helped you understand the homeless community in San Francisco a little better and the struggles faced by the disabled and transgender members of this city as well.