"BEING DOWN AND OUT, ONCE" by a student at Project Hope, Dorchester

I was homeless before when I was 19 years old. My mother left her apartment move in with her boyfriend and left me and my father in the house. My father gambles so he don't know nothing about paying bills. So when I got 20 years old, I got pregnant. I went from house to house. Then when I had my baby, I went to a shelter and then I got Section 8. I know what it is like being homeless. It is nothing nice. The cost of living is too high.

-Gwendolyn Roberts