Katy and her mother, Liz, were evicted from their apartment in California at the end of last year.  They had nowhere to go.  Nowhere to live.  Katy told of their plight in her blog, found here:  http://destinationanywherebuthere.blogspot.com/.  The Christian community all over Amercia responded.  

Now, Katy tells her story in her own words for The Cypress Times.  

Katy's Story - Anywhere But Here

I don’t know why I started Anywhere But Here; I really cannot remember exactly.

For a while, things had been rough. My dad died when I was six. My mom lost her job at Longs in 2004 because she went on disability and she has been looking for another one ever since. It’s rough, because you can’t force someone to hire you. But she has been looking to the best of her ability. Since then our only income has been Survivor’s Social Security, which paid the rent and bills and not much else. In May 2008 I turned 16, and Mom lost her portion of our Survivor’s. There went our rent. We looked for other places to live, but everywhere was just so expensive. And our landlord didn’t help; he wanted us out of the apartment so bad but he blacklisted us. Kinda counterproductive, that.

For months we had no idea what was going to happen to us. We lived in boxes, for months, not knowing if it was going to turn out that we could stay at the apartment, or if we were going to find an apartment that would take us, or what. I remember looking at this really nice apartment, after we saw it I prayed so hard that we would get it. The woman had been pretty nice, but days turned into weeks and months and we never heard back from her, even though she said she would tell us even if we didn’t get it.

We didn’t hear anything from anyone. Not even the landlord. So we slowly began to unpack, thinking we were going to be okay, thinking since we had paid the back rent and everything we would get to stay there and be okay and start putting our lives back together. We wanted to fix the apartment up nice, maybe get flowers for the kitchen table, decorate for Christmas. That didn’t happen. In the beginning of December we got the first eviction notice.

Yes, first. Our landlord really didn’t know what he was doing, because months before he had tried to give us these little illegal typed up three day notices—it doesn’t work that way. You have to go through court before you give three day notices, and when you do it has to be through the sheriff. I guess in December someone finally told him how to do it right. Except, he filed two evictions, and never told us about the court day for either. In California, and yes, I am serious, I saw the tenant laws book, I was there when we talked to the lawyer, and I saw the eviction papers themselves, in California it is the landlord’s job to inform the tenant of the court date. And he didn’t. So we never got a chance to defend ourselves.

In the middle of December was when things got very serious. We used what money we had to get stays, so we had more of a chance to pack and figure out what to do. Even so the last day was horrendously frantic, and we left many of our things to be stored there. I can’t really remember what I thought about those days, I just wanted to pack the things that meant the most to me. I figured if we had to leave things behind, I wanted my most important things to stay with me.

On December 17^th we couldn’t afford any more stays, so that was the Frantic Last Day of Packing. We got our storage unit that day, and borrowed the storage place’s giant don’t-mess-with-it-or-our-monkey-goons-will-make-your-life-miserable truck. That in itself was a bit traumatizing—for a while after I didn’t like speeds over 30mph. Luckily we got one of our neighbors to help us pack it full, which took hours. We were packing the truck and packing boxes at the same time. Finally towards the end of the day two other people came to help, and they drove the truck. There was no room for me, so I stayed home with our Chihuahuas. That was a painful several hours, because I had no way to contact anyone. No phone, I couldn’t get onto dial-up, nothing. I was so scared. For days the neighbors had been terrorizing us, and the police didn’t do anything about it. They said they hadn’t done anything wrong. I was so scared they were going to pull something while I was home alone. I stacked phone books at the door and every time I heard even the tiniest noise I would stand on them and peep out the peek hole. (Have I mentioned I’m like 5 feet tall?) It was always nothing, thank goodness. Finally they returned and we packed full our car, and left.

The first thing we did was get gas. I remember staring out the windshield at the businesses nearby, and—it was after 9pm—being surprised that a hair salon was still open and busy. We had no idea where we were going; my Mom had looked in the phonebook earlier for pet friendly, relatively cheap hotels, and she had found one she wanted to try, but didn’t know the address. It had been hours since we’d last eaten, so we got something at Weinerschnitzel. Mine was a hot dog. We looked for the pet-friendly hotel but couldn’t find it, so we tried a different one. I was so relieved when my mom came back from the office and we had a room for a few nights.

Oh, but I’ve forgotten my blogs. In November, my mom had been thinking about making and selling dog clothes. The question was, “how to get the word out?” How to sell them? Buying a website wasn’t really an option, so what else could one do? Get a blog. Make bookmarks and put the blog on them along with doggie clothes pictures, and leave ‘em at the library. While we never actually did this, the idea of getting a blog stuck in my head. I had looked it up and it was free, and I really wanted a place where I could share things that the people I already knew weren’t really interested in. And have a place to put my art. So I created The Blinky Blog (theblinkyblog.blogspot.com) under the fake name I had created one day while riding the Light Rail.

Later on, when our situation got worse, I kept picturing blogging about what was going on. I had intended to wait until after we got out of the apartment, though. Then my mom said something about it, and I created Anywhere But Here (destinationanywherebuthere.blogspot.com). Anywhere But Here was how I felt at the time; things were so uncomfortable at the other apartment.

At the motel, we were in a lot of pain from having done so much in such a short amount of time. We had no idea what was going to happen next, so we stayed there until we could no longer afford it. Then we spent two nights in the car. After that second night we went early to our nearby café, and stayed there for a while. We had reason to—Brandilyn Collins (Best-Selling Author - http://www.forensicsandfaith.blogspot.com/ ) had blogged about my blog, and all of a sudden Anywhere But Here had 4 followers. I was so surprised. The number grew over the day, and even my other blogs had found some followers. And At the very end of the day my mom discovered an email from someone offering to get us a hotel room for the night. So we didn’t have to sleep in the car again.

The next few weeks we stayed in several motels thanks to donations from people. Each day we never knew what was going to happen, if we would get news about where we were going to live, or what. Towards the end, it was hard because we didn’t know if we were going to end up in the car again, but the day before we moved we found out we were going to move. And on January 17^th, exactly one month later, we moved into our apartment.

This isn’t the end, though. We’re still unpacking. We moved from a very large apartment to a very small one, and we’re slowly going through everything and deciding what not to keep. And in order to stay here, my mom has to find a job. She’s looking, people just aren’t hiring. (What a time to turn 16 and lose your rent money—in the middle of one horrible recession…) I can’t go out and get a regular job because we would lose the rest of our Suvivor’s, but I’ve been taking art jobs, but that doesn’t pay the rent. It does help a bit though. (Want some? Details here: http://theblinkyblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-dont-make-it-till-you-order-it.html ) But what would really help is if my mom got hired somewhere. That would be fantastic.

So we still live one day at a time, not sure what tomorrow will bring. I still blog at Anywhere But Here and The Blinky Blog (and several other places)—of course, I love blogging! We don’t know when this part of our lives will end, or how it will end. Every night I wonder what will happen tomorrow. Will there be something I can blog about?