Family, it's raining in Tampa as I write this, and I'm okay.
Thank you for being here. I keep saying it because it keeps being true: your support buys the hours between a shift and the page, and I don't take a single one of you for granted.
This is a complete update, the honest kind. Where I'm at, what I'm carrying, what I'm building toward. Some of it is still a work in progress, and some of it is a mess, so thank you for your patience while I build in public.
The short version, if you're short on time: I'm still homeless and still working about 42 hours a week. A room may open up Monday, and if it does, I'll owe half a month's rent up front. This weekend my usual room jumped from $40 to $80 a night. If you've been meaning to buy me a coffee, this is the weekend it lands hardest. Everything below is the long version.
Where I'm at
I'm still homeless. I'm working on something more stable, and right now that looks like renting a room in an apartment here in Tampa. It was supposed to happen this weekend. Then it was Saturday. Now I'm being told maybe Monday. I'm not sure even they are sure, so I'm taking it one day at a time. If it comes together, I'll owe half the month's rent up front, on top of everything else.
The place I'm staying is overbooked this weekend, so I may have to find another room nearby for a couple of nights. That could double my expenses for the weekend, which I was not prepared for. Dealing with a lot with very little, and always praying for miracles.
I'm still on the housing lists. They don't seem to move. A lot of shelters have intake hours that conflict with my work hours, so checking in with them just isn't doable right now. And I haven't been able to get all the pieces together for another housing application while working. It meant finding a place first, getting someone to agree to sign a lease with me, and being there in person, all during work hours. I can't do it all at once, and right now the time just isn't there.
The money truth
I'm working five days a week now instead of my usual four ten-hour days, averaging around 42 hours a week. But my overtime is not really overtime right now. It isn't extra. It's covering the hours my body costs me. It's saving me, barely.
I'm still crossing my fingers on the bonuses I've been working toward. They don't pay out right away, and I can't count them until they land, but I'm praying I've qualified for enough of them to make a dent. Some of that money was supposed to help secure a place, or cover moving in with someone, on top of the weekly rate where I'm staying.
Open enrollment just ended at work, and here's what I chose. I turned down the paid medical plans. They would have taken $100 to $155 out of every biweekly paycheck, and right now that money is the difference between a room and the street. I kept the plan my employer covers at no cost to me, which pays fixed amounts rather than full coverage, and I kept dental, vision, and legal, which together run about $14 a paycheck. That was a math decision, not a health decision.
A soft ask for this weekend
One more thing about money. This is Halloween weekend, and it seems like everybody wants to party, because the places around here are overbooked and my usual room has jumped from $40 a night to $80 a night. So here is a soft ask, with no pressure at all: if you've been thinking about buying me a coffee, this is the weekend it would help the most. A cup or two goes straight toward two days of quiet, away from the chaos, while I figure it all out. Two nights at the Halloween rate is $160, double what I planned for.
And if you'd rather help steady the ground under all of it, The Seeker is $3 a month. Small gold, poured steady, is how I stop living emergency to emergency.
Why I don't just pick up a second job
There is an embarrassment in being 44 years old and still needing help. I want to say that plainly, because pretending otherwise helps no one. I still need support sometimes. And I am working, hard, on not needing it forever.
People wonder why I don't just pick up a second job. Here's why: with my health and my energy right now, I can barely make it through my work week as it is. A second job could break that balance, and if it did, I could lose both jobs. So I'm keeping the standard path, the quote unquote 9 to 5, and I'm also building the unusual ones: the writing, the art, the projects you're watching me make. I'm trying to be creative about self-sufficiency instead of just more tired, while I keep seeking help through the housing routes too.
Most days I feel like a multi-limbed deity, every arm holding up something different: the job, the room, the letters, the dream.
The legal fight
The legal battle is still going, though it's taken a slight back burner, because work and housing have to come first.
I heard back from the lawyer for my former landlord in one of my past evictions. It was a threatening letter. It denies my request for my deposit back, claims I owe unpaid rent and damages, and says that if I sue, my former landlord will countersue me for the damages and the rent they say I owe, plus attorney fees and costs.
Here is my side. They claim I owe unpaid rent. I dispute that. My rent was supported through a housing program, and I dispute their account of what happened when that support ended. The letter also points to damage, including the plumbing and septic system, conditions I documented with dated photos and a city complaint while I lived there. I dispute their claims.
Let me tell you what these fights are worth to me. There are two of them: the eviction case, and a later place where there was no eviction at all, where we agreed that I would leave. Between them, landlords are holding over $4,000, almost $5,000, in deposits. That money is a chance to restart my life and regain some lost ground.
Both landlords were paid for every month I lived on their properties.
I'm telling you this because people who become homeless are forced to take it. Forced to take the losses, take the hits, and some of those hits are irreparable. I have a right to my voice, and to my side of the story, and I'm using it.
My record now has three eviction entries across two properties. Two record entries for one property. Those marks don't tell the whole story, and they keep following me. I believe one of those evictions never should have happened at all.
I've sought legal advice, more than once, and what I've been told is that at least one of these deposits should have come back to me by now.
I believe that eviction was uncalled for. It caused me harm and damage, and it put my life at risk. So I'm fighting for both deposits, through emails and exchanges, with one landlord's lawyer and one landlord, and maybe another lawyer soon. In the later place, I've disputed the charges in writing. Not because I want a war. Because I don't believe anyone has the right to keep what was mine, and I'm not willing to stay silent about the damage.
And the landlords aren't the only front. I'm also fighting Bank of America, over a fraud flag I never earned and records that don't add up. It's multiple fights on multiple fronts, all at the same time. You can read that fight in my own words: Show Me the Records, on Substack (https://kosmicquill.substack.com/p/show-me-the-records), and the same story on Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/adontaimason/show-me-records). And if you want something lighter between the battles, there's my podcast, The Good News (https://kosmicquill.substack.com/podcast).
What I've survived is worth more than any deposit. Five years of homelessness. Five years of sleeping on the streets, of shitting myself in the streets, of being attacked and nearly killed. What an eviction record and homelessness cost a person is a bigger number than these landlords are fighting over, and there is research on the wider bill.
A 2014 Central Florida study (https://www.cfch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Eco-Impact-Report-LOW-RES-2.pdf) of 107 people experiencing chronic homelessness, using their 2013 records, estimated $31,065 per person in a single year in arrests, bookings, jail, and emergency room and inpatient hospital costs alone. The same study estimated that housing that person with support services would cost $10,051 a year, about a third of leaving them outside. A separate study (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10772599/) of Chicago and New York housing courts tied an eviction order alone to roughly $3,700 in lost earnings over the following two years. Neither comes close to pricing five years of my life.
The wider bill, in one study's numbers. 2013 dollars, one cohort, not a national average.
We are building a fuller personal accounting: what this has cost me, and what it has cost the family and friends carrying it with me. I'll update this post when that number lands.
And what those studies don't count, I'm living. I have a $3,000 emergency room bill of my own, with no traditional health insurance behind me. My medication comes through an assistance program, because the job I just got can't cover it yet, when it can't even cover housing. If I need legal representation to fight for my own deposits back, that's another cost I have to carry. No study is an accounting of my life, and I'm not going to pretend a tidy number can hold it. These are real costs, and they land on a human being.
This is wrong, what happened to me is wrong, and if no one else will stand up and fight for me, then I'm going to stand up and fight for myself.
On Monday I'm answering that lawyer directly, and I'm answering the Bank of America representative who's been corresponding with me too. I'm not putting anyone's name out here, not his, not his lawyer's, because this isn't about hurting anyone. But I won't pretend the letter didn't come, and I won't let my side go untold. Whatever they say I've done to them by speaking, it does not compare to what all of this has done to me. I'm just sharing my side of the story, as a human being, with the people who support me.
If you've ever lost a deposit you knew was yours, or carried a record that doesn't tell the whole story, I'd like to hear it in the comments. I don't think I'm the only one.
What I'm building toward
All of this is why the projects matter. They are the way out and the way through. The room that jumped from $40 to $80 a night, the 42-hour weeks, the fights on every front: all of it buys time and ground for this work to grow.
This page was just rebuilt, with a clearer promise and Episode 1 of The Mending Hour, my animated story series, featured at the top: https://buymeacoffee.com/adontaimason
Watch Episode 1 of The Mending Hour: The Right to Be Read, on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R86xbWHq6Kk)
My writing lives free on Substack: https://kosmicquill.substack.com
The art gallery, Petals, is an ongoing project and one of my favorite things we're making: https://kosmic-quill-gallery.vercel.app
The shop is open: https://shop.kosmicquill.com
Christmas cards are in the works. The 100 Lives Mission is still what it always was: a dream I'm building toward, one housed person at a time, starting with me. And everything lives in one place at https://kosmicquill.com.
Forgive the dust. All of it is still becoming. Stay close, and keep watching for updates.
If you're catching up, start with Reasons to Stay and Keys, Motels, and the Next Fight.
How I'm doing, honestly
Yesterday morning was a rainy day for me, mentally and emotionally. Today is medium. A little blasé. Looking for two days of space to myself while I figure it all out.
I won't pretend I'm not scared. I'm still in a state of fear and anxiety, most days. If not for my supporters, and for the AI I'm learning to use, I would be fighting all of this completely alone, and that's a scary, scary thought. I hate to even imagine what it would be like without any support at all. So thank you for being here: every cup of coffee, every read, every kind word. This is me being human, still. These words are mine; the tools help me carry them, but the story is lived, not generated. I'm learning to use this technology better, and hopefully we'll get better at it together.
I wanted to call all of this a beautiful mess. But sometimes it's not beautiful at all, and lately it hasn't felt beautiful. That's the truth of it. I'm still here anyway, still writing, still building. Measured optimism is still optimism.
If this reached you this weekend and you're able, a coffee helps carry the next two nights. If you're not able, reading this far counts, and passing it to one person who might care counts too. Either way, thank you for staying close.
May those we remember be close, and may the light we carry guide us through the dark. Wishing you a peaceful evening of remembrance.
Adontai, aka Traie
The Kosmic Quill Project