WEBVTT

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[ Music ]

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>> I never thought I'd be homeless.

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I felt like it was us against the world.

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Coming to San Francisco we
had all these high hopes.

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We were like campus is a great place.

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It's beautiful.

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We're so excited, you know.

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We had all these hopes and then we came out
here and it's just like damn, it's really hard.

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Housing has been pretty difficult to come by.

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I first moved out here and I found a
place with a friend who lived off campus.

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But then she got evicted so we both had to leave
or pay like $1000 just to stay another night.

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So we're just kind of like walking
the street, one of our friends offered

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to let us keep our stuff at her house while we
like moved around, back and forward to school

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and we were able to spend some
nights with her but not all the time.

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Sometimes we wouldn't have anywhere to go so
we would just kind of wander around school,

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wait until our friend would be
like hey, you can come over.

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It was really difficult.

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>> Ever since I graduated high school at
the age of 18 I was actually homeless.

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What's kind of led to me to this point was
stress, I think, the amount of stress of working

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and going to school at the same
time was taking its toll on me.

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So by this year I started
living in the homeless shelter.

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The weight I was carrying
was just too much for me.

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Even the semester before
I was having some trouble.

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I take medication.

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And I was living in a living
room, which was stressful.

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I worked the logistics out for me and
coming home late and from work and trying

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to manage my health on top of my
school and academics and music.

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>> In 2001 I experienced homelessness for
the first time as a pregnant young woman.

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I also struggled with drug addiction
and all the other issues that come along

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with it, incarceration and all of that.

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It put me in a spot where I had
to access the shelter system.

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And off and on I was in transitional living
and then I would go from here to there living

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on the streets, staying in like a flea
bag hotel to like being out all night.

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It happened from like 2000 to, I
want to say 2007 like off and on.

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>> Yeah I used to go to this
gas station and eat.

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There's a lot of like just fast food and
just things that I used to come to eat

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and just hang out outside, at night mainly.

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And then down the street on Shotwell
[phonetic] I used to go and take the back alleys

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and my friend had a tent behind and I
used to go and stay there sometimes, yeah.

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>> We mostly just like slept in the library.

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I saw a lot of people like sleeping in the
library so I didn't think it was like a weird

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thing and it was just kind
of like, ok, I'm tired.

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I'm just going to go take a nap in the
library, also the break room at work.

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My roommate and I were both homeless
but we didn't have like the same

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schedules so it was kind of
like, hey, where are you?

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And then after work we'd kind of be
like hey, like where we going to go?

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So it was a lot of like empty time.

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And we weren't like freaking out about
school and like getting our work done.

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[ Music ]

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I think upstairs like by the new third
floor they have just like rows and rows

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and so we would just kind
of like sit there and sleep.

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After midnight this is closed
so we kind of just like stick

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to here, like research, backpack down.

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>> I remember sitting on this
spot, just kind of people watching.

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So yeah I was just walking around
campus, anything to keep us busy, yeah.

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>> Using public bathrooms sometimes,
going to the library a lot of the times.

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Back then they didn't have the
[inaudible] so I didn't have that resource.

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There's only very limited places in the city

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where you can take a shower
and the lines are very long.

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And so just being able to like go to
the thrift store, go to St. Anthony's

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to get clothes, things like that.

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>> Right now I live in a place called
Larkin [phonetic] Youth Services.

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It's a homeless shelter for kids ages 18 to 24
and it's located in the Tenderloin neighborhood

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of San Francisco right on the
border of Van Ness and Ellis.

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My family and I all live together in a
house in Palo Alto so I was always granted

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with the privilege of having, you know,
a room to come home to after school.

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I was inexperienced with a ton of like
stress from at a young age like that

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where you don't have a place
to go to, like a home base,

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but it's more recent towards the start of
college when we all decided in my family to move

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out of the house, was when I started
experiencing that experience.

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>> It was not only scary, really heavy.

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We had to much clothes.

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We were unprepared so we packed
too much of the wrong stuff

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so yeah it was definitely stressful having to
lug all our stuff around from place to place

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and all our valuables we
had to always keep on us

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so it's a little stressful, my
laptops and stuff like that.

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I think actually the whole time we felt unsafe.

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We didn't not have a moment where we
were just like awe, like you know?

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We're just kind of always alert.

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We both work downtown pretty
late so then we'd just

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kind of be like shuffling around with nowhere
to go, kind of just endlessly wandering.

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>> I think not only finding
but keeping a job is hard.

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I work here and I see people that
do have jobs and they'll come

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in the morning early, 4:00, 5:00,

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to sign up for a bed and then they'll come
back at 7:00 to pick up their reservation.

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And I wasn't working when I was homeless.

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I can't even imagine working full time
and not being able to like lay your head

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down or rest and put up your feet.

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It must be hard.

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>> It's draining, it's like taxing
on yourself and your mind, your body,

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you have to be very limited
in what you carry around.

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If you have a chance to have a
locker here that will help too

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but there's only certain hours
that you can have access to it.

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But I see people day after day have jobs.

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>> It's definitely got me to think about
that extra time to spend with friends,

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you know, take care of my health.

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I don't have to spend money on being
in hospitals the rest of my life.

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I can spend money on practicing guitar and
maybe promoting myself, maybe devote that money

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into like investing in my profession.

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>> We went to the psychiatrist.

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It was a time when we were just like really
stressed out with school and everything.

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And my friend, she gets depressed so we both
went to the psychiatrist person and we talked

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to them and they had told us about
like homeless shelters but we didn't

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really feel that we belonged
in a homeless shelter.

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It wouldn't have been a good fit for us.

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So we didn't use those resources.

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My freshman year was kind of just like
going through all that and I was just kind

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of like, is this what college is like?

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But towards the end of that

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I found some friends and
that's what really helped.

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>> I was hospitalized towards
the end of the year.

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And then the doctors through Keiser were able
to find housing for me through the insurance.

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They were helpful in locating me to Larkin.

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It's really tough to get in, like
you've got to call every morning.

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You don't pay rent there but you've got to
like do the foot work to get a bed there

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and then maintain that same amount
of work to continue to live there.

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So it was through my medical provider,
thankfully, that I have the place.

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Otherwise I would have been me like digging
through phone books or like the internet,

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going to the library every day trying
to find like somewhere to live.

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>> There was a vicious cycle
that I just couldn't get out of.

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I wanted to get out but I just didn't know how.

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I didn't know how to start.

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I didn't know who to go to.

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I didn't know like what first step to take.

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And that was super hard for me.

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I knew that I wanted something
better for me and my family.

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So I was able to work with a really
good case manager and I applied

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for all the housing options,
which are very limited.

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But they had this community housing partnership
that was available to 44 of the families

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that were in the shelter and I was able to
get in one of those and I'm still there now.

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And because of that I'm able to pursue
my education because I'm not worried

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about all the rent that I am paying you know
especially now in San Francisco it's crazy,

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ridiculous amounts of rent.

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Being in a supportive environment
where I'm only paying 30 percent

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of my income just makes it so much easier.

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I am able to go to school and then work
towards my goal of being self-sufficient.

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>> People think of a college today they
think of them in a dorm or somewhere

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at a party getting drunk or something like that.

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They don't think about the
other side in finding a place,

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they just expect us to have a place and we
don't, especially if we live off campus,

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there's not a lot of help out there for
us and the housing is really competitive.

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[ Music ]