Military and Homelessness

When you hear those two words together, unfortunately, most people imagine our veteran housing crisis in America. They sacrificed greatly for their country, giving over their body, mind, and soul, and are gifted a 50% higher chance of becoming homeless than their peers who did not serve. But I am not talking about homelessness in veterans. I am talking about the unspoken population- active duty members and their families experiencing homelessness.

I will have to admit that I was in a dark headspace at times and thought to myself bitterly, "no one actually cares about the homeless military population-- vets are living proof. No one will care about my family."

But that's not true, there are countless NGOs that are actually doing good work for military housing security, including AFHA. AFHA is trying to advocate for and educate service-members on their rights in regard to military housing. There are even countless more trying to put a stopper on the complex epidemic of the veteran housing crisis. My family was actually homeless for 5 months, and legally homeless for 2.5 years with my wife as an active duty member in the military. I have no peer network to talk to while experiencing it and I want to use this platform so hopefully, someone in my situation feels a little less alone. This article is more emotional than I try to make our content, but I needed to be authentic here. My wife has been in the Coast Guard for 14 years, just 3 months longer than we've been married. We've experienced 5 duty stations (places she worked) and moved by permanent change of station (PCS). However, I have moved well over 9 times, and my wife has done geo-bachelor (lived separately from family) for one of those duty stations.

Tired of constantly moving our belongings, we decided to do what a lot of military families do and buy an RV. And living in an RV full-time is legal homelessness. I don't really count this period towards my personal homeless clock, but it was incredibly stressful securing our car insurance and registration, voter registration, and some location-based assets. Even getting a PO box to have our mail delivered to required us to lie and say my mother-in-law's address was our address. Thankfully, however, we were able to navigate that system and persisted. Fast forward through 3-5? hurricanes and we are at our next duty transfer. We PCS to our current location and there is nowhere to park our RV that was cheaper than rent for a home in Louisana. A spot did open after hopping around RV lots every 3 days but it did have a rental cap of 6 months. With all of the issues we had, the RV also started to rot unexpectedly and we decided to sell it and live in a home again. Considering its condition, we just wanted to break even and the buyer made that possible. Really grateful to him and his family. We had sold the RV but no housing was available, and we were now officially homeless-homeless. Everyone is aware that the current economic situation for renters is horrible, and we couldn't afford a private rental company, apartments or single-family homes. Our only option was military housing--which is capped at our income and includes all utilities. However, military housing has a national average wait time of 6 months to a year. What do families do during this wait time? Spend money on hotels, extended stays, or crash with other military families. You have to remember, most PCS means you are away from your support system and you are alone in your community until you are established.

I have a special needs category in the Coast Guard that ensures we get stationed where I will have access to doctors I need, and we are prioritized when it comes to resources. Even with my special needs waiver, our wait time was "I have no idea when a home will be available."

Thankfully, we had moved to my childhood city, and we were able to live with relatives. All of our belongings except our bed, 2 weeks of clothes, and one of our computers were in storage. We lived in a spare bedroom with my parrot and my dog. Now, I do not want my sister who graciously let us live with her feel badly, but that house did have challenges. We persisted but we were in absolute limbo from October 2022 to January 2nd. January 2nd, we were given the move-in date of Feb 17th.

My sister bought her own house during this period and moved out of the area Dec 27th, 2022. We were able to stay until Feb 6th and didn't know where we were going to go from feb 6th-Feb 17th and had spent most of the end of January trying to figure it out. The same sister let us stay in her new home, but we were unable to bring the animals. Thankfully, other family members were able to care for them during that two weeks. We were very fortunate, and lucky, that we had my local family. That is extremely rare in the military. Thousands and thousands of dollars would be spent on hotels and about the same would be spent on food because you don't have a kitchen. More than you would have paid in rent and groceries.

Two days before our move-in date, Feb 15th, we were told the house was not ready yet and weren't sure when it would be. They had already pushed our move in time back three times (same day, just later in the day) so I didn't believe them when they said it could be ready next week. I will admit, out of everything that had happened in my life in the last 8 months, that moment is the moment that broke me. We had already rented the trucks, got a bunch of people from the command to help us move, I had taken time off of the afternoon from work to handle everything, and in a moment, I was indefinitely homeless again in my mind. Somehow, despite having to wait for that long, there was a second home now available when they called the following day, the same original move-in day even! it was larger than the original but was completely different. I felt foolish for even being upset about not being able to rent the original house because any house should be fine at this point, but so many changes had happened, my brain was no longer in adult mode. I was angry, I felt the office was purposely neglectful for waiting so close to our move date to tell us, and I felt like no one cared. My wife and I found out yesterday, March 4th, why this house was "suddenly" available. The housing office had promised a previous house to another family and it was unavailable. The office then offered this house, then this house was unavailable, and the family was moved to a third house. Their move-in date was Feb 15th and we moved in Feb 17th.

Now the rational, calm and collected version of myself knows that the housing office is doing their best. However, military housing across America should be doing better. 6 months of wait time to get a home is far too long for families who have to move every 3 years. Every month is vital to the stability of our family members, our mental wellness, and our spouse's ability to work.

During this period of homelessness, my contract with Stop Soldier Suicide ended, I job searched for the second time in 2022, and found a new job.

It's been an insane ride, and I've been incredibly fortunate to have 4 of my family members nearby, ready to support and care for me. I'm incredibly fortunate that my special needs put us at the front of the list and we were able to secure a home 2 months shorter than our peers would have. I'm incredibly lucky that a second home was available with the same move-in day (though for unfortunate reasons). I try not to look back at that period in my life with anger in my heart, and I didn't publically talk about it much while experiencing it. I didn't feel like I had a right to because I was living in someone's home. However, being back in my own place-- having a full pantry and food options for my dietary needs, cleaning products that don't aggravate my allergies, and small things-- the stress that I was under is hitting me. If you are experiencing a housing crisis, don't stay silent because others could have it worse than you, or you should be grateful for what you have. Your experience can be painful and deserves a friendly ear. For military peer networks, please check out military communities. For mental resiliency resources, including nonprofits specifically for the military, please check out our Resilience section.