Let's All Have A Door, Let's All Have a Roof

Reflections on housing and the lack of it

A Shakespearean Sonnet About Doors

by Ian McMillan

It’s not much to ask. Just a door to lock.
A door that won’t break when someone kicks it.
Door with a keyhole. Respond to that knock
Or not. My choice. It’s broke so let’s fix it:
The world, I mean. Not the door. That’s ok.
It’s my door, to my room. Look: here’s the key.
The world, though. That’s different. Somewhere to stay
Is what we all need. Somewhere to be me
And not just someone you blithely ignore
When you see me sleeping on the street.
Let’s begin with this. A door. Just a door
To start with. A door. Food. Then light and heat.
The world must respond to this simple truth:
Let’s all have a door. Let’s all have a roof.

Photo credit: Jan Peppler

I was 18 years old when I decided to move across the country on my own. And since this meant I would not be attending Northern Illinois University as my parents had hoped, I would not be accepting any money from them. Not that they offered. At least, not then.

It seemed like a crazy idea, sure. My mother was extremely upset, crying at my bedside, pleading with me not to leave. My departure devastated my father as well, but he didn’t show it. If he had, I would have stayed. Instead, all he said was, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll send you a bus ticket home.”

So I took off for San Francisco with all the money I had saved, including $250 from selling my saxophone, which I went on to regret for the rest of my life. Selling my saxophone, that is, not moving to San Francisco. The latter was the best thing. I thought so then and still do today.

Everyone said I was courageous. It never felt that way to me. After all, if it didn’t work out, I could always go home.

When my father died, I was home. I was back in Chicago, living in his basement, taking care of him for months. I went back to work maybe sooner than I wanted, but I knew I needed my own place. My stepmom would have been happy to have me stay, but she also would have started charging me rent. It was the basement, for heaven’s sake, with no washroom. I was squatting on a camper toilet in the middle of the night, next to the furnace.

When I left my marriage and I took off for Mexico (cliché?), again, I wasn’t afraid. If worse came to worse, I could always go home. And the worse came. Sick with dysentery and a fever of 104°, I managed to fly back to Chicago where my sister picked me up and took me to the hospital. After six hours, my doctor agreed to release me, provided I had somewhere to go and someone to take care of me. Not my sister, she had cats and I’m extremely allergic. Instead, I spent the next four weeks on the futon of the home I had just left. “I thought you might come back,” Jo said, “I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

When my mother died, twenty years after my dad, I was unexpectedly inconsolable. I sobbed and heaved just as hard as I had two decades earlier. My mother was extraordinary in so many ways and extremely erudite, but it had taken me many years to recognize this. Now, finally on the path to my academic dreams, I was excited to discuss everything with her: all that I was learning and the woman I was becoming. And then, very quickly, she was gone.

I lost her, my mom, my star sign. On top of that, I lost home.

Until that point, I continued to believe that if the very worst happened, I could always go home. Meaning, sleep on my mother’s couch. If you asked me, I’d include my sister’s or brother’s, but they both had cats and the latter had kids. The kids I could live with, the cats I couldn’t.

Realistically, I couldn’t have slept at my mother’s for those last few years. She was in a senior living community. And if something truly tragic had happened to me, I suppose my siblings would have found a way to help. But once my mother was gone, so was my safety net. For the first time in my life, I felt absolutely vulnerable and alone. I still had my family and wonderful friends and even Tom, but now I knew it was all on me.

All my adult life I have often said, “but by the Grace of God, I am not on the streets.” And I’ve meant it. There were times that I rolled coins and sold jewelry. And times that I’ve worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. Other times, I’ve had enough money to be quite comfortable. I’ve had the stability of a good paying position to afford my rent, even a mortgage, as well as vacations and dinners in restaurants. But I’ve always been one disaster away from homelessness. One major illness. One devastating diagnosis. One extreme crisis. In one month or two, maybe three, everything could be gone.

Which is why the cost of housing, particularly long-term rental housing, worries me. And has worried me for years.

When I sold my home in Picabo in 2018 (at a loss, btw), I knew that I would never again be able to rent a place for lower than what my mortgage had been, at least not in the Wood River Valley, and at its highest, my mortgage was $1500 a month. Today, my place would rent for probably $4,000. In general, around here, 3-bedrooms start at $3,000 a month rent and can go as high as $6,000. And we’re not talking about a super nice place in wealthy areas.

Consequently, so many of the “workers” in this area, live somewhere else. I interviewed a family last week where the mother drove four hours a day to work a full-time job in Sun Valley. This isn’t the mass exodus to suburbs that happened a few decades ago. When folks chose a long commute in exchange for bigger homes, better schools, and safer neighborhoods. This is folks having to live far from where they work in order to afford housing. And this, my friends, is not only insane, it is ultimately unsustainable.

Jeremy Ney discusses this in his recent piece, “Why homelessness just hit a 15-year high, rising 12% from last year: Rising rents and low housing inventory spur an unprecedented level of homelessness in America.  There are multiple factors that contribute to this crisis.

My personal pet peeve is AirBnb. Don’t get me wrong – ten years ago, even four when I found myself in Italy during the Covid pandemic, I loved this business. I fully support renting an extra room or your entire home when you’re not there, but this business has blossomed far beyond that. Now, properties are regularly purchased purely for vacation rentals. This has reduced the inventory of housing available for local residents. In the Tulsa neighborhood that I just left in September, there were 10 Airbnbs within three blocks of my place that were only available for short-term rental. That’s 10 apartments and homes that I know of that are no longer available for people who live in the city and need housing.  The real number, I’m sure, is much higher. And, as we all know, when there is less of something, the demand increases, as does the cost.

So what’s a person to do? Many folks are living in their cars. Now coolly referred to as “vehicle residency,” this trend is on the rise among full-time workers who can no longer afford ongoing increases in rental prices. Joan DeMartin discusses this in “The Latest Trend: Live In Your Car, Parking Lot Provided.” I knew one such woman in Tulsa with a college degree and two jobs. When her roommate brought home a boyfriend who became abusive, she was forced to leave for her own safety. But she had co-signed on a year lease and couldn’t get out of it, so she was legally bound to keep paying for an apartment she couldn’t live in. Instead, she lived out of her car and took showers at the YMCA. There was no family as a safety net, only a mother in another state struggling with mental illness. And after a while, really, how long can you sleep on a friend’s couch?

Only two states—Oregon and California—have statewide rent control laws. Just over 200 local governments in another five states have some form of residential rent control in effect. That’s not enough. We need better laws that protect and assist renters.

Last year in Tulsa, I interviewed an elderly woman who had lived in her apartment for 11 years comfortably, but in the last two years, her rent had been raised twice to a total increase of almost $400. Think about that: $400 increase on an apartment which previously cost her $700! She didn’t know what she was going to do. Her Social Security was barely enough to pay for housing. Where could she find a place that was less expensive? And if she did, how could she afford to move? She would have to leave behind everything.

Housing is a human right. Shelter is a primary need. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1948, states in Article 25:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…

There is so much to say about this, but let’s not dive into politics or philosophy. Let’s keep this real. I told you my story. What about yours?

Have you been impacted by the housing shortage?

Have you ever been homeless? Have you lived in your car?

Do you worry about paying your mortgage or rent?

Or maybe you know people in these situations. Tell me. I want to know. We need to talk about this crisis and stop stigmatizing people who can’t afford the cost of housing, which is rising out of control. We can’t keep delegating homelessness to drunks, drug addicts, and the mentally ill - this is insulting and inaccurate. Almost any one of us could be homeless. But, by the grace of God, at this moment, we’re not.

Photo credit: Jan Peppler

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