Lori’s Story

I feel like I’ve lived three lives in one life.

I had my life when I was a young girl, which ran into getting high and doing all the crazy things we do when we’re young. And then I got clean, and that’s like a whole separate life. It’s like I became a different person, and I enjoyed getting clean. It was a great experience. I love it to death. I’m still 30 years clean to this day, 30-something by now.

And now as a senior woman, it’s a whole different life. Before I was working and getting clean and doing all the things that you do when you get clean. So now that I’m a senior woman, it’s been a lot tougher. Life has been a lot tougher. I was homeless for a while. I was fairly older then, too, when I retired. I think I was 55 when I retired and became homeless.

I broke up with my boyfriend after 10 years of being with him. I got sick. I got very sick with San Joaquin Valley fever. And then I lost my apartment. It all happened in threes. I didn’t have a boyfriend anymore to help me pay the rent. Couldn’t afford it anymore, so then I became homeless. Luckily for me, he bought me a van that I could drive. It was a minivan, but it worked.

Being homeless wasn’t that bad for the first five years. I really just became like a traveler. I traveled everywhere. I went all the way to Georgia and back and experienced what it’s like just to travel around for a while. I took the south route to Georgia, and I took the north route back. I went through Tennessee and Colorado and all those states to come back, Idaho and stuff like that. It was a unique experience, and one that I’m never going to do again this lifetime.

When I broke up with my boyfriend, it became much harder. It was much colder. I had two dogs to take care of, and it was a lot harder by myself. By the second year that we had broken up, it was so cold in the winter that I was just too cold. I was like, I gotta get off the streets.

I had already filled out an application here in Santa Cruz. I went to the safe parking program, and they hooked me up, and that’s when it all started to roll out. They also did my application for my current apartment, and that came through in the three years that I was without my boyfriend. When I finally moved in, I was ecstatic. I love my place. I feel safe here. My dogs are safe here. Everybody’s safe here, and they love me here. That was my hardest thing, getting a place, was getting the dogs in. They did a special accommodation for me to have them. They understood I couldn’t break them up.

It’s been a long seven, eight years.

I worked at a program called Sage, standing against global exploitation. I went all over the world for that job. I went to Bangladesh, I went to Singapore, I went to London, I went to Malaysia, and talked about life in exploitation, because I’m an exploited woman.

I also worked for a shelter called Hospitality House. It was the oldest shelter in San Francisco, and it was the smallest. It was only a men’s shelter. I worked there for 14 years. I got guys walking around San Francisco calling, “there goes my angel. She got me a house.”

It was a great experience, but it was a traumatic experience all at the same time. It is traumatic having to hear people’s stories all the time, the drama and the pain they’ve gone through. It seeps into your bones. I started having panic attacks. After so many years of working with others who’ve been exploited and then working with the homeless population, I started having panic attacks. Then finally I got sick, and I had to leave my job. I ended up leaving without being able to say goodbye.

I’ve been homeless off and on for my whole life. We lived with the father and my children. We moved back here three times. I had my two children here, and then we’d go back on the road and go traveling.

The father of my kids was violent. He took my son after putting his hands on me one last time. I took both kids with me to the YWCA. They gave me a free room because I was experiencing domestic violence. He called me the next day and said, “are you going to let me visit my son?” I said “of course, come get him, take him for the day.” I had no idea he was going to take him across the border. He took him across the border and called me from Eugene, Oregon, and said “you’re never going to see your son again if you don’t come back to me.” I said “I guess I’m never going to see my son again, because I ain’t going back to you.”

After that, I got into drugs. It was traumatic. Then the system took my daughter away. I ended up going to jail. Instead of being able to go to court and fight it, I was in jail.

I’ve had my children stolen from me.

I do have a son that I raised. I got him when he was four. He’s the son of my ex husband’s sister. She went to prison, and grandma had him. I helped grandma out at first, just weekends and holidays. Then it started getting to be summer, and then finally they said you can have him. I got him, graduated through high school, and he’s 26 years old now.

I’ve had some crazy experiences, but I’ve had some really good ones. It all makes me who I am today.

I worked with a therapist around things that were out of my control that I couldn’t change. 

It’s much better having an animal with you if you’re living alone, especially as a woman. Most people won’t mess with you if you have a dog.

Since I’m here in Santa Cruz, and there is such a huge population of the homeless, I felt like I needed to do something, to be an inspiration for someone else getting housing. Joining the Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG) was just like, yeah, I’m in that. It’s been fun. I can’t really do a lot of heavy work, but I can talk my butt off. Even though it makes me a little nervous, it’s not that bad. I’ve done it before in front of lots of people.

This story was collected in April 2026 by Andrea Feltz, Lived Experience Advisory Group Manager