Growing up I didn't really have stable housing, but my parents always put in the effort to make sure that we had a place to live. Whether we slept at our uncles, aunts, or cousin’s house for the night, we still had a place to sleep. We moved to California for a better lifestyle. We stayed at our aunt's house for a while, and fast forward to 2019 we got our first apartment. We were so excited. My mom started to make a lot of money working with elderly people. We bought a PlayStation, X Box and Nintendo. Our school McAuliffe Elementary School also blessed us with money to get settled in our new house. My mom cried with joy and appreciation. She used the money to buy us a TV. Everything was going good until Covid 19 hit.

Our neighbors had a water leak that got into our house and destroyed everything. The landlord was supposed to pay for everything during the pandemic, but instead, she started to avoid us and we ended up being evicted. We went to stay with our auntie again, but eventually she ended up getting orders to move to Maryland. We really wanted to go with her, but she couldn't let us go. We were upset that we couldn't go and became homeless. We ended up moving to a shelter. My dad moved into a men’s shelter, and we stayed in a different shelter with our mom for two years. 

When our time was up, the director of the shelter took us to the airport because my mom thought it would be safer to stay there instead of on the streets. We stayed there for one week. My mom ended up getting hurt so we had to push her around in a wheelchair. Two of the security guards at the airport bought us food so we wouldn't be hungry. We were very appreciative. My dad wanted to come get us but his shelter wouldn’t allow it, which made him very upset. He thought about leaving the shelter but my mom talked him out of it. Two days later he came to get us.

When we left the airport, we caught the trolley to Carlsbad where we used to live and stayed at a Motel 6. My dad came the next day and we bounced back and forth at hotels together. One hotel was nice, they provided breakfast for us, but it would cost my dad a thousand dollars for us to continue staying there. My dad's money started to get low so he picked up extra hours at his job at Ikea. During that time, we were trying to go to shelters to see if we could get in. Some didn't allow us to enter because there were pedophiles there. My mom was sad and lost all hope. At some point it got easy, but we started accumulating more clothes and it was hard to bring everything along with us.

I heard my parents talking about the money getting low and it made me scared of being homeless and staying on the street. I heard a lot of bad stories about people staying on the streets. We ended up on the waitlist at Father Joe's Villages. They gave us a six month timeframe, but my mom ended up calling every week for a year straight. When we finally got accepted, I was upset because I didn't like the outside of the building. It smelled horrible, and there were a lot of homeless people around. I was scared because I would have to wake up at 5am to catch the trolley to make it to school in Clairemont. But it ended up working out. We even met a new cousin that ended up staying at the shelter with us. 

Since we've been here, I’ve made a lot of friends and I love it here now. I am humbled because there are people in the world who are less fortunate than us. I get to have a roof over my head, surrounded by people who love me, while others are still on the streets.