‘After My Family Lost Our 2-Bedroom OB Apartment, We Were Homeless for 2 and Half Years’

By Natalie Raschke / Op-Ed SD Union-Tribune /Dec. 13, 2023

There’s no place like home for the holidays. This is especially true for families like mine, who’ve experienced homelessness. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, both my husband and I could no longer work as bartenders and, with many restaurants closing their doors, job opportunities in our industry were scarce. At first, we lived off our savings and unemployment, but after a while we were unable to afford the rent in our two-bedroom apartment in Ocean Beach where we lived with our four children. To cut costs, we moved into an RV for 24 months, then spent another six months living in a van.

These were the hardest two-and-a-half years of our lives for a couple of reasons. First, even after my husband found work as a grocery store manager, our family could not find permanent housing. Apartments required two months’ rent, and two years of rental and employment history. Little did I know at the time, once a person or family is classified as homeless, finding housing becomes 10 times harder than before.

Perhaps most painfully, my family was often treated like an eyesore, garbage that needed to be cleared away. I will never forget the time my family was asked to leave a campsite because — as the police officer put it — the people who lived on the hillside had worked hard to purchase their homes and didn’t want our RV disturbing their view of the bay. On another occasion, a woman shook her head as she passed me, and muttered that I was disgusting. Then there were the people who shined their headlights into the window of our RV in the middle of the night, hoping it would cause us to leave.

But where would we go? My family wasn’t unhoused because we wanted to be. We were desperately trying to access resources, but the city does not have enough housing that is affordable — or even shelter spaces for families.

My husband Dustin and I are educated, hardworking, tax-paying people. He was the volunteer coach for our son’s flag football team for six years. I was an intern at Naval Base Point Loma, a position that required a security clearance. We were a working-class family with stocked kitchen cupboards and SeaWorld passes. If you boogie board at Ocean Beach, you might have shared a wave with my sons. You may have seen our younger children giggling uproariously as they watched orangutans picking their noses at the zoo. We never expected to be homeless. Few people do.

When people think about homelessness in San Diego, several images come to mind: rows of tents lining the streets Downtown, shopping carts circling libraries and encampments settled in canyons. The narrative is that unhoused people are struggling with drug addiction or untreated mental illness because that’s who we see on the streets. They are a certain part of the equation, and these people need and deserve housing with wraparound services that address their issues.

The reality is that most homeless people in San Diego are the ones you don’t see. We are healthy, drug-free, working people — families, veterans and older citizens — whose primary challenge is a lack of affordable housing. We’ve had some economic setbacks and are discovering that our city infrastructure is ill-prepared to help us make the transition into permanent housing.

Homelessness is a complex issue, but the solution is simple: San Diego needs to build more housing that is affordable. Our city officials seem to understand that building more housing is the key to addressing homelessness. And they are investing in it, but nowhere near the scale they need to make a meaningful difference. We need to tackle homelessness at its root cause — skyrocketing rents and a housing shortage.

Investing in housing that is affordable has worked in other cities — and it’s worked for my family. But this issue is far bigger than my family, which is why I want to share my experience. Sadly, it is not unique. There are thousands more families like us, who are at-risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness this holiday season.

Today my husband and four children are decorating a Christmas tree, feeling grateful that the Housing Commission supported our family in finding permanent housing. Regardless of our circumstances, what we earn or what we look like, we all need a safe place to call home. This season, let us find the political will to prioritize affordable housing.

Raschke is an advocate for Lived Experience Advisers, a San Diego-based nonprofit working to end homelessness in our community. She and her family are currently living in Mission Valley.