Shelly: A Single Mom Gets Evicted After Her Hours Were Cut

Photography by Bryan Regan for SaverLife

After experiencing homelessness for years, Shelly moved into a stable home in 2019. By 2020, her landlord evicted her. 

• Shelly’s employer cut her hours because of the pandemic. She changed jobs twice to make enough money to survive.

• When she fell behind on rent, her landlord evicted her.

• In the late summer of 2020, Shelly moved into a new home. She found a steady job that pays well and is proud to have her own home.

Evicted

Three months into the pandemic, Shelly’s landlord called to say he wouldn’t accept partial payments anymore. If she couldn’t pay off her back rent in full, he would start eviction proceedings.

“Save your money,” he said. “Expect a letter from my lawyer in the mail.”

Shelly clutched the phone, watching her sons Michael, 11, and Micah, 3, play outside. The house in Raleigh, N.C, was small, but it had a yard that reminded her of childhood summers in the North Carolina countryside. She loved having a place to sit with an evening glass of wine and her kids safely around her. 

“I will never be homeless again. I don’t care what I have to do.”

The shock settled in. Shelly knew she was behind on rent, but like millions of Americans, she was navigating a pandemic that had upturned her working life and slashed her hours. She’d just found a new job, with more shifts, but she was still in a hole.

As her landlord explained the eviction process, Shelly paced her house, planning for the future. She was used to having things taken away from her, and so the eviction news didn’t break her; it just made her determined to find her next home. 

“I’ve been homeless before, and I will never be homeless again,” she said. “I don’t care what I have to do.”

Shelly has faced housing insecurity her whole life. She was three when her dad died. Her mother is legally blind, and in Shelly’s words, “not all there mentally.” And so Barbara, an older cousin, received custody. Her strict, religious rules chafed as Shelly grew older.  

Shelly got pregnant and dropped out of school during her senior year of high school. She earned her diploma through community college, but the strains of being a teenage mom overwhelmed her. At 19, she signed custody of her son, Michael, to her cousin while she tried to find her way as an adult.

The move eased her life at first—she lived with her birth mother, worked at call centers and nightclubs, and saw her son on weekends. But after four years, Barbara was butting heads with Michael, and Shelly regained custody. Michael came to live with her at her mother’s home.

“She said she didn’t want my son anymore because he was hard-headed. It broke my heart,” Shelly said. “I wanted to step up a little more because I was fighting for my kid.”

Tensions soon exploded. After Shelly repeatedly complained about her mom’s husband’s drug use, her mother kicked Michael and her out. “We became homeless at that moment.”

It was a bleak time for Shelly. She had $10 in the bank and no home. She stayed with friends or in motel rooms. On nights she had nowhere to go, she dropped Michael off with Barbara and slept in her car. Sometimes, she’d clock out of her call center job, pretend she was going home, and never leave the parking lot.

“I was fighting for my kid.”

She dreamed of her own place, but between tickets for cracked windshields and paying for hotels so she could bathe, she was getting nowhere. “I was constantly working,” she said. “But I couldn’t save $1,000.”

Hopelessness became despair after she gave birth to her second son. Her postpartum depression was so severe she contemplated taking her own life. “I loved my kids, but I felt like I wasn’t a good mother. It was so much.”

A friend intervened—Shelly can hardly remember what she said she was so dazed—but it pulled her back from the edge and focused her on finding a way out.

A home of her own

Things started to improve when she connected with Triangle Family Services, a family services nonprofit in the Raleigh area. 

The organization helped her get a new job and provided the assistance that got her into her new home. Shelly used her income tax return to pay her first three months of rent. In February 2020, she got a job at AutoZone, within walking distance from her place. Things began to feel stable.

Thirty percent of female SaverLife members say they are earning less during the pandemic because their hours have been cut.

But once the pandemic hit, AutoZone cut her hours, and she had to provide remote schooling for Michael and increased childcare for Micah. She got a second job at Walmart, which grew to full-time until the store began closing early during the summer protests. Again, Shelly’s hours dropped—like the thirty percent of female SaverLife members who say they are earning less during the pandemic because their hours have been cut.

Eventually, she found work at a pharmaceutical company in the fall of 2020. “It’s the most I’ve been paid in any job.”

She also found an apartment next door to Micah’s grandmother. Helped by a grant from a nonprofit, she paid the $1,000 deposit. The rent is $100 a month more than her old place, but it’s bigger, and this landlord works with her. When she switched to her new job in the fall, she fell behind briefly but as long as she pays the late fee, the landlord is fine, she said.

She is starting to feel secure enough to dream of the future. “I want to stay where I’m at for at least two years,” she said. “I want to buy a house by the time I’m 33. That’s my goal.”

Shelly’s story could have been different. Affordable childcare would have made a huge difference for her family.