Tonia's story "“I Refused To Be Homeless”

After 10 years in a relationship, Tonia left her home after her partner began abusing her. She found a housing program living in an apartment with 3 other women where each only had to pay $700/month. Things were going well until suddenly, one day, she got word that the program was ending. At first, she was told that she could continue to stay in her apartment because a new organization would be taking over. When months went by and she didn’t get any new information, she started to worry.

“So what are we gonna do? I was like, oh my God, it was so stressful. It was so stressful between me, going to work, trying to find a place to stay within two weeks. I've never had high blood pressure ever before for a whole week. My blood pressure went up because I literally was crying and not sleeping.”

Tonia had lost her youngest daughter to epilepsy in 2015 and watched her grandson really suffer after that. “He smoked weed for the first time to deal with her death and someone laced it, and then he started acting really crazy. And then his dad was putting him in some kind of facility, and I was like, no, this is not my grandson, because my grandson is a straight-A student. So I went to North Carolina and got him.” She gave up her room for her grandson and slept on the couch.

She was given a list of places she could call for assistance and was promised $2000 toward a new apartment, but with every call she made, she was told that they had no funds to help her.

Eventually, she and her current roommate reached out to the leasing office of the building they were staying in and finally were told that they could apply to take over the apartment lease. They were approved. The only problem was that they didn’t have enough money for the deposit.

“We finally went to an apartment the week before and we were like, look, we don't want to be homeless. We were told you can't move in until you pay the deposit. I'm like, what if we pay the deposit? We're not going to have the rent.”

They said, “Well, if you could pay the deposit, then you just take it out of it and pay it two weeks later.” I'm like, well, we're always gonna be in the hole like with weeks till we catch up, right?”

Tonia was able to get in touch with A Home For Everyone In DeKalb and explained to them the situation. At first, she was told that they didn’t have any funds. “Something inside me said, just send them another email. By the grace of God, I say, her name is Caroline, she answered and she was like, wow, I said, ma'am, I could show you my records if you want to. I'm so stressed like I don't, I can't. I'm at this point, you know, no one's calling us saying, hey, we could help you, no one's trying to give no solution. It's just like they just threw us to the wind.”

Caroline, the intake specialist from A Home, was able to get in touch with the apartment landlord and quickly bring the payment to them in person.

“She literally saved us or we would have been homeless, me and my roommate Denise. My grandson has his own room. We didn’t have to move. We are staying in a place that we were already paying for. The only difference is that we are paying real rent, the light bill, etc.

To go home and say it’s mine. We don't have to worry about if someone's gonna take it away, I feel good. I refuse to be homeless.”