Our landlord died, and we had to leave our rental that was our home for the last three years. We have not been able to find a rental for $1600 that allows children and so we will be forced to live in a van until Summer. I am asking for help in making it warm enough to sleep in, and also asking for help in finding a place to shower. We exhausted our little savings on motels and storage units for the last two months while we contacted every government agency and non-profit that I could find, to no avail. There is simply no housing for a mother and child in Marin County for $1600 a month. There are no shelters; there is nothing. I am reluctant to ask directly for money, but many offered on Nextdoor and I have seen that the system is broken -- the safety net we presume is there is no longer. Maybe neighbors helping each other directly will be the future.

 

Many, many people assume there's some place out there for us -- rest assured after months of looking there is not. We've been turned away from cottages and mother-in-laws in Sausalito, Mill Valley and San Rafael because the owners won't rent to children. Affordable Housing Advocates tell me this is illegal and asked me for names. I haven't done that yet, as my focus is on finding shelter for my child, not punishing others. I've also been trying since 2018 to get a ban on short-term rentals, which reduce the available long-term rentals drastically. I'd like to help all families, not just mine.

 

So this is the reality in Marin. When your landlord dies, like ours did, there is no longer any place to house your children. Yes, we see the writing on the wall and will have to relocate this summer -- the non-wealthy can't afford to raise their children here anymore. We live on my wages alone; that is no longer enough to support a family here, without relying on inherited wealth. However, I want my son to finish the middle school he's been at for three years and graduate with his class. He deserves that - he is one of the top grade earners at his school and always works hard to help others.

 

I tell our story so people know. To make a record. To bear witness. I've been to every housing agency there is -- I make too much money to qualify for any assistance. I don't feel comfortable asking for assistance, but if the county is paying millions of dollars to put homeless people into motels, why can't they put my son and I into a motel? WHere is the logic? I asked a county employee, "If I quit my job tomorrow, will you house my son and I?" She snapped, "I don't find that question very productive." My son jokes that he hopes the homeless in Sausalito will leave us their tents when they move into the hotel rooms that we don't qualify for because I work and they don't. I'm not saying we are any more deserving of shelter than those in the Marinship camps -- I am saying that people need to know there is no help for employed families who can't afford more than $1600 a month for rent.

 

I emailed the County Supervisors to ask if they can act in this crisis - doing something outside the box, like declaring a State of Emergency Due to the Housing Crisis so that funds can be used to help working families have shelter -- the money for assistance now only goes to the mostly unemployed or those with no jobs.

 

We are surrounded by some of the wealthiest, most “successful” minds in our country, and yet we have our heads in the sand about this problem. Can’t we activate the high-tech brilliance and set up small cargo containers, or tiny yurts somewhere for families who have lived here for years and are being displaced, yet who could pay $1000 or $1500 for those spaces? Local news is obsessed with helping the displaced refugees in other countries, but not with stopping displacement of families right here, right now. Nextdoor is filled with sad stories of families begging and pleading for rental leads when they have to leave the place they've been in -- and one by one, after months of posts, many say they're forced to leave the area. Our family as well as many others are refugees from the Bay Area housing crisis.

 

I told the Commissioners our only choice left, if we want my son to finish out his last months of his middle school, is to sleep in our car until the summer, afterwhich time we will be forced to relocate out of the area. To Commissioner Rodoni's credit, his office asked yet another housing agency to contact me. This woman from a county social services agency called me - I asked if she would clarify that there is in fact no assistance or temp shelter (that we would pay for) for an employed mother and her child who can't find a place to rent for $1600 in Marin or Southern Sonoma. Her reply: "You know, you don't have to live in Marin. You can move someplace else."

 

So in order to allow my son to finish his middle school, we will be sleeping in our car very soon. A nice person is going to rent us her converted van, but she doesn't know how to make the heating system work. It's a Dometic Brisk ii installed in the ceiling and might be controlled by a digital device on the wall. We tested sleeping in it at night and it is very, very, very cold. We put our things into storage months ago, anticipating moving into a house, not a van -- and so our winter clothes and sleeping bags are at the bottom of the storage unit.

 

We need help to stay warm - the temperature in the van is the same as the temperature outside and it's going to be in the low 40s in the next week.

Again, I don't feel comfortable directly asking for money, but I do believe the system is broken.  Local newspapers and governments are obsessed with moving the mentally ill homeless off the streets but show no concern about working families that have nowhere to go and are moving to the streets. I hope our story will also eventually help other families as well.