When Kathleen first discovered she’d have to move out of her one-bedroom apartment in West Peterborough at the end of May, she saw it as a good opportunity to go camping and hiking before finding a new place to live at the end of the summer. Six months later, her belongings are still in a storage unit and she’s uncertain when she’ll have something other than a temporary place to live.
Kathleen is retired, and her main source of income is her social security check. “You can’t pay more than your check is,” she said, and that she has about $760 a month to work with after paying for medical insurance.
Kathleen has savings that render her ineligible for Medicaid. She would prefer to stay in the area and live in a safe, smoke-free space without a roommate.
Until June, Kathleen had spent 33 years renting at Heatherbrook Apartments at a subsidized rate. She said that the property managers decided to not renew her lease, and believes it was because she complained about not having heat in her apartment last October.
Ann Weeks, a property manager for Heatherbrook, said that the company opted to not renew her lease after a history of Kathleen being “very difficult.”
“When I walk by where I used to live, it just about kills me,” Kathleen said.
Recently, Kathleen said she saw a great apartment in Peterborough, and both she and the landlord thought it’d be a great fit, but the rate was too high for her social security check. Another time, she said she was the fifth person to interview for an affordable apartment on Main Street, but it was snapped up by a previous visitor.
Kathleen qualifies for a Section 8 housing voucher and has been looking into senior housing with no immediate options available. She said she’s been looking into private rentals as well, but most private landlords won’t consider working with her voucher.
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at things on Craigslist,” she said, and her friends are on the lookout for her as well.
“I just didn’t believe it would take me the whole summer and I’d still not find an apartment,” she said.
All her belongings, including her winter clothes, are in a climate-controlled storage unit two and a half hours away.
Kathleen stayed with two different friends for a week apiece in June and July, and understood that she couldn’t rely on friends or family for a longer-term temporary solution. While she was camping, she said she came down with a case of Lyme disease. By the second week of July, she asked if she could pay to stay in the second bedroom of a house occupied by a couple she knew.
“I’m lucky they let me stay at their house,” she said. “I’m the one who offered how much I would pay, but just didn’t realize it wasn’t gonna be so long.”
She said the homeowners ask for time alone in the common areas of the house, so Kathleen chooses between spending time in her room or community spaces.
“It’s stressful to live this way,” she said. “I have $20 out of my check left after the room and my storage unit.”
She said she couldn’t afford to pay extra to turn on the heat in her room, and spent one afternoon filling out applications for apartments in her car, in part because it was warmer than the room she rented.
Kathleen said she was homeless years ago when she was pregnant, moving around as people offered her places to stay.
“This is the worst it’s ever been,” she said, describing her situation as a housing crisis. Relying on social services or going to a shelter are not appealing to her. “I like to take care of me.”
She said a couple of places have been offered to her after the current tenants move out, but without a set move-out date, “it could be one, two, three months,” she said.
Recently, she said her application to a new apartment complex in Rochester was denied because of a reference from Heatherbrook’s THM Property Management Services. “I can’t lie and say I wasn’t there for 33 years,” Kathleen said, and noted that the same company that lost her her housing is now preventing her from finding new housing. Weeks said that the only negative statement the company made on Kathleen’s reference was that they would not rent to her again.
Kathleen said she’s expanded her search from Concord through the east side of the state. “You can’t think of a half-empty glass,” she said.
Editor’s note: This article is the first of two stories the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript plans to run this week as part of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The interviewee’s name has been truncated at her request.