Tires & Brakes for Homeless Journey

This is kind of a long story, and I’m not sure where to begin, but please bear with me.  This is the first chance I’ve had to really write this all down in one place.

My husband Thor and I are not used to asking for help. It’s usually us helping other people. It brings a smile to our faces when we can make a difference in someone’s life, even if it’s just something simple like helping a stranded motorist change a tire, or cooking for friends, or even buying dinner for a homeless couple and their dog. We figure that it’s called The Golden Rule for a reason, and nothing makes us happier than seeing someone cry tears of joy because a total stranger cares about them, and seeing that look in their eyes tell you that you helped restore a small piece of that person’s faith in humanity. And that’s why this is so hard for us.  Because while helping others makes you feel incredible, having to swallow your pride and ask for help is not easy.

To say the least, the last three years have proved to be a life-changing experience. It has been the most difficult time either of us has ever been through, as we have struggled through adversity, losing friends and family, and just fighting to keep our heads above water and stay positive while wondering what life will throw at us next.  We went from living in a beautiful two bedroom apartment near ASU campus in Tempe, Arizona, to being homeless in Vancouver, Washington in the winter and having to worry about eating and staying warm. I am an independent software developer, and Thor is a musician, so we are no stranger to living project to project, and have been through periods of “feast and famine” in the nine years we’ve been together, but nothing compared to the trials and tribulations we face now.

It all started in November of 2014 when a big client backed out of the next phase of their project after I had completed thousands of dollars of preparatory work. Changing business direction is not, in of itself, uncommon.  However, I was very surprised when they refused to pay for all the work I had done, violating our ongoing contract, and because I could not afford to take them to court, we were forced to eat the loss.  Instead of giving up, we stayed positive and adapted to the situation.  Being that we couldn’t afford the increasing rent and being in danger of getting evicted, we knew we had to leave that apartment.  After weeks of searching, we contacted a local charity which put us up in a hotel for almost a month while we waited for low-income housing to become available.  We were ecstatic when we found a place we could afford. But, little did we know our nightmare was just beginning.  

The landlord at that place turned out to be a snake, not only did she take the maximum possible deposit from the charity that helped us get into housing ($1500 on a $400 a month unit), but she also used some creative accounting and shady business practices to try and force an eviction on us after only one year.  We were living off of food boxes from a local church at this point.  Thor was forced to dismantle his home recording studio and sell all of his equipment that we had spent a few years acquiring to further his career in music and voice acting, including amps, mics, guitars, and a mixer to pay the rent, but we couldn’t possibly pay the several thousands of dollars she claimed we owed in late fees.  She was accepting the rent payments but kept the late fees rolling over each month even after rent was paid up to $40 a day. It was also around this time that Thor got the news that his mother, who had never touched a cigarette in her life, had been diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma (Cancer) in the left lung and that despite treatment, it will eventually take her life. This hit Thor especially hard because his mother lives in Nebraska, and we haven’t been able to afford to visit her in almost two years, and in our financial state, there was just no way to get there. We fought the landlord in court, and the astronomical late fees were thrown out, but we still couldn’t afford the rent we owed, and in July of 2016 the landlord was granted an eviction order.

We had nowhere to turn. We had exhausted the resources available to us and had taken to asking friends on Facebook for help.  We just needed a place to stay while we saved some money to get back on our feet.  It was then when some good friends of mine, who I hadn’t seen in years, and had never even met my husband, offered to take us into their guest house in Tucson, Arizona.  With nothing left to lose, we packed everything that we could fit into our ‘91 Chevy Suburban, including our two cats Twitch and Silverbelle, and drove the 125 miles to Tucson, leaving behind anything we couldn’t fit in the truck.  We finally had a moment of respite.  We had lost our home, and most of our possessions, but we still had our each other and the cats.  They let us live in their guest house for very cheap rent (basically just the electric and water we were using, plus a small amount) as we paid off what we owed, and saved up what we could.

In September of 2016, while still living with our friends in Tucson, Thor’s best friend Eric, who was like a brother to him, died suddenly.  It absolutely destroyed him.  It scared me seeing my husband, this big, burly, bearded Viking man, unable to speak, sobbing uncontrollably.  Eric had moved home to Michigan in the years before so not only had we not been able to visit, but we couldn’t afford to send Thor to his brother’s funeral because what little money we had was going to go towards putting a roof over our heads.

By October of 2016, we had managed to save up about $3000 and we began looking for our own place.  In December, Thor was contacted by an old friend he’s known for 15+ years (since High School) who lived up in Vancouver, WA.  He had come down to AZ to visit for Christmas and spend time with his family and invited us to go shooting with him, and then over to his mom’s place for Christmas brunch. After the holidays, this friend went home to Vancouver, but we stayed in contact.  He said he had thought about it and thought that we should move to Washington.  He offered to rent us a room in his two-bedroom apartment, sharing rent costs to help us out, the only condition being that we couldn’t bring our cats. Me being a software developer and Thor being a musician, and with nothing left to lose, living between Seattle and Portland seemed to be a good opportunity for both of us, and we were desperate, so we decided to go for it.  Our friends in Tucson kept Twitch and Silverbelle to help us find homes for them.  We realized that Thor’s truck wasn’t mechanically sound enough to make the 1500 mile journey to Washington safely with a failing transmission and bald tires, so we packed just the essentials into three suitcases and bought plane tickets.

January 16th, 2017 we arrived in the Pacific Northwest and it was amazing!  The first few months up here felt like we were really finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I started making headway on building a client base, and Thor started writing music again on a cheap acoustic guitar we bought in Tucson that almost didn’t survive the trip. That’s when this old friend revealed his true nature and everything started to fall apart.  

The friend (who I’ll call RM for Room Mate) was working as a machinist and going to school full time, so he didn’t have time to cook his meals.  Thor and I bought most of the food and cooked his lunch and dinner for almost 3 months.  At one point RM injured himself at work, forgetting to shut off power to a machine he was cleaning and managed to shove his fingers into a steel fan blade.  He temporarily lost the use of his left hand and took time off work and school to recover, during which Thor and I took up the slack, taking care of him, helping him with daily tasks and cooking ALL meals.  RM was given painkillers by his doctor and one day he took too many causing him to get sick and throw up. I cleaned this man's vomit. We were literally taking care of him like a sick child, which we didn’t mind at all. He was a friend and was helping us by letting us stay and had even let us borrow a mattress to sleep on. We considered him family.

In June, I lost a major contract and Thor had to sell his ‘91 Suburban that we left in AZ which barely covered rent.  In July we were still struggling and just before we went to watch the fireworks at Fort Vancouver on the 4th, the “friend” informed us that we had three days to pay or vacate the premises or he would file to evict us.  This was like a dagger in Thor’s heart. After everything we had done for him, and despite all that we had been through, we always paid him even if late by a couple days.  He also said he couldn’t afford the internet, and disconnected the router saying he had to return it.  As a software developer, the internet is how I make my living and was the only way for me to even try to make rent money.

Over the next three days, we did some research and came to find out that RM had been lying to us from the beginning. We found out that he had lied about the total bills, meaning we were paying two-thirds of the rent instead of half, and two-thirds of electric and internet as well. I called Xfinity and found out the RM hadn’t taken the router back, or canceled his service, but was just taking it out so we couldn’t use it. We also discovered that the apartment was low-income HUD housing which he didn’t qualify for, having forged papers to get the apartment in the first place and was, therefore, subletting to us illegally. After the three days were up, he approached us and asked what we were still doing there. We told him that we have nowhere to go and what he was doing was wrong.  He then took back the mattress he lent us, saying his other friend needed it and just went into the bedroom and dumped all of our bedding on the floor, and carried it out. The next day he served us with eviction papers and that’s when things got REALLY weird.

After serving us the papers, he proceeded to remove the living room couch, I’m guessing in an attempt to make us as uncomfortable as possible.  Over the next few days, he removed all the furniture in the apartment, forcing us to eat standing up, and sit and sleep on the floor.  He piled a bunch of his stuff on the two tables in the house, rendering them useless, lest we move his property.  One morning, we awoke to discover that he had even removed the toilet paper, and all TP substitutes in the house (I’m not even kidding. Napkins, paper towels, newspaper, magazines… All gone.)  In response to all of this insanity, I folded several origami flowers and left them around the house, as well as left cheerful messages on the refrigerator whiteboard in an attempt to lighten the mood and maybe open the door for dialogue. He just ripped them up and threw them in the trash.  

We had to walk a mile or so to the local library and to coffee shops to sit and use the internet so I could try and get some work done. While working at a coffee shop one afternoon, an older couple, Rich and Nancy, came in and took the seats right across from us.  They struck up a conversation and we ended up telling them our whole story.  They felt bad for us, and took us out to dinner that night, and offered to let us hang out at their house during the day to use the internet so I could work and to help us at least temporarily escape from a hostile environment. This helped out immensely, but nothing could have prepared us for what RM did next.

Three days prior to our court date, Thor and I were at the apartment taking a nap when we were startled by a deafening knock at the door.  “VANCOUVER POLICE DEPARTMENT, OPEN THE DOOR!”  We quickly got dressed and open the door at which point the police officers informed us that RM had filed for an order of protection against us and that we were to surrender all weapons and vacate the premises immediately. Then they presented us with a copy of the order and we were horrified. RM had gone to the local police department and told them that we were violent maniacs who had been threatening, assaulting, and abusing him for months.  He even claimed that we had threatened to kill the neighbor kid for being too loud.  Mind you, RM makes guns for a living and has a small armory in his bedroom. It was at this point that we realized two things. For one, was that RM had a serious mental issue if he would lie to the police and accuse us of such terrible things just to get us out of the house before the court date. And two, we were now being thrown out on the street, in a city 1600 miles from anyone we know, with no vehicle, and only what we could pack up and leave with.

There we were, standing on the side of the street, in tears, with as much of our stuff as we could carry 300 feet away from the apartment.  We didn’t know what else to do so Thor called Rich and Nancy.  We told them all that had happened and they actually came right over and picked us up. This retired couple in their 60’s, invited a couple of strangers they didn’t really know to stay with them until we could figure out what to do. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about when I talk about restoring faith in humanity. It turned out to be mutually beneficial because while we were facing homelessness, they had their own struggle that we were willing and able to help with. Rich was recovering from a major spinal surgery, and Nancy was trying to find work as a substitute teacher. So over the next three months, we helped out around the house unpacking boxes, assembling and rearranging their new Ikea furniture, walking the dogs, doing the dishes, cooking some of the meals, going to the store for groceries and using our own food stamps to buy a lot of the food for the household. I still feel like Rich and Nancy truly saved our bacon.  They are two of the most beautiful human beings I have ever met. But, alas, we couldn’t stay there forever and it was time to move on.

We had been saving as much money as we could, and doing a lot of research into “Vanlife” and being a “Digital Nomad”.  The prospect sounded awesome to us, because not only would it be a very cheap way to live and save some money for our future if our only bills were food, gas, and car insurance, but it would allow us the opportunity to make our way back to Arizona to see our friends and pick up some of the things we had to leave there, and then continue on Nebraska to see Thor’s mom, who he hasn’t seen since before she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and we haven’t told her any of this story because the last thing she needs is to worry about us.  

After much deliberation, we settled on getting another Suburban. It would be big enough to fit both of us, everything we own, and with 4WD capabilities, we’d be able to camp anywhere and drive through the snowy mountains with no issue on our way to Nebraska. Our total budget was about $1500. That’s not a lot but after several weeks of searching Craigslist and Facebook and such, we found the perfect one. It was a 1986 GMC Suburban with a good strong engine and transmission. The guy we bought it from originally wanted $2800 but after we told him about our situation and the fact that we were buying it to live in, he gave us a smoking deal and sold it to us for $1400 leaving us just enough money to fill the gas tank. We took a few days to get a trip permit so we could drive legally without paying a lot to get it registered, and found a free mattress in Portland in good condition.  The truck would need a lot of things fixed before it was safe to drive back to Arizona and on to Nebraska, but it looked like it would be fine to live in and drive around town as we work and try to save money to make the repairs.  At that point we were ready, so we packed our things said goodbye to Rich and Nancy and moved into the truck.

It was official. As of October 31st, 2017, we were homeless.  

The first couple of weeks living in the truck were very difficult.  Not only were we having to adjust to living in a truck and learn how to do a lot of things differently, but we had a hard time finding a place to sleep! During the day we were able to go to a coffee shop or the library and work, but every night we ran into the same problem of where to park.  We started sleeping in different Wal-Mart parking lots, but after about a week of this, a nice old security guard kindly informed us that Wal-Mart no longer allows people to park overnight.  We did some research and found out that this is true along almost the entire west coast.  We had to sleep in some pretty creepy parking lots, and we even went north of town and spent a few nights at a rest stop just off the highway, but this proved to be too expensive to drive to and from every day, and it wasn’t safe to drive on the interstate with our truck in its current state.

Up until this point, I had been finding it hard to admit that we were actually homeless. I had just kind of thought of it more like a camping trip. It wasn’t until one night, we couldn’t figure out where to go, that we ended up at a 24hr diner at 2:30 AM, thinking maybe we should just stay up all night and sleep during the day.  It was a hard realization that we couldn’t live like that. After an exhaustive search online, I found a local program, Safe Park, that was set up for people like us, who were homeless and living in a vehicle. David Bilby, the Safe Park Program Director met with us that night, providing a parking pass that allowed us to sleep in the parking lot of a church participating in the program. We have been sleeping in this parking lot for almost two months now.  

We have managed to fix a few small things on the truck, and make the freezing cold nights a little more bearable by insulating the ceiling and windows and piling on the blankets, but the cost to fix the truck up to where it’s safe to drive across country is just too much. The tires have dry rot and need to be replaced before they blow out and leave us stranded. This could easily cost up to $2000 because they are big all terrain tires that fit the truck, and the wheels need to be replaced as well (apparently they are an obsolete size). If it was just around town, we’d find some used ones that would work, but we need to get our little house on wheels across the country to get to our family!  The tie rods are also bad and need to be replaced. This makes the steering very loose, and squirrelly at anything over about 45mph. It needs a new windshield (big vertical crack), new master cylinder for the brake system (leaking fluids and the brakes are squishy), a full brake job (front and rear), a front bumper (technically illegal to drive without… shhhhhh…..), and we have plans to build a platform for the bed in the back and shelves because it’s very cramped in there with our clothes, food, and bedding just kinda shoved in there.  We also could use some food and gas money to get us there.  I know that the repairs to the truck and food and gas will probably run somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000 to $6000 but I am asking for $10,000 in the hopes that anything extra we can get will go towards helping with Thor’s mom and her medical expenses.

If this GoFundMe campaign is successful, it would be an absolute dream come true for us.  Please help us to restore some faith in humanity, help to reunite a family, help a homeless couple get back on their feet, help a mom fight her battle with lung cancer, and help us pay it forward so that we can be in a position to help someone else in the future.  If you’ve read this far, thank you so much for sticking with it.  I’m sorry for writing a book here, but this has been a bit of a therapeutic experience, and if nothing else, it felt good to get all of this off my chest.  

Thank you and God Bless!