I strike a match, its sulfuric smell permeates my nose. The flame touches the wick of a cinnamon-scented candle and I put a record on. I'm still getting used to having my own space. In September, I began moving into my apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., while preparing for my second year of college. Two weeks before, I hugged my mother goodbye for what might be one of the last times in a while. Not because I am cutting her off, but because she is homeless.
Growing up in Idaho, our housing situation was always unstable, unique, odd. While most of my peers lived in single-family homes, my mother and I drifted between small apartments and houses full of strangers. Our typical co-occupants were artists and musicians and even the occasional felon. They occupied our space for various lengths of time, but when they left, it tended to be messy — a fight over dishes or parking would result in the collapse of the relationship and the living situation.
Although I was often enamored by the bang of the drums in the basement and the canvases turning into works of art, what I wanted most was to be like my peers. I wanted to live with my family, not strangers. From a young age, I knew I wanted stability. I became obsessive about my education — something not one person in my family had, and yet, something I believed to be my shot at a different kind of future.
After a turbulent road, I luckily landed at a school in New York City with a scholarship that was enough to keep me out of debt as long as I worked. Two months prior to moving, my mom sat me down and tried to convince me to stay. State school was affordable, close and most importantly, safe. She told me New York could wait. What she didn't understand was that if I stayed in that house, in that city, any longer, I felt I'd die.
I moved to New York City that August, and my mom went into credit card debt to send me kitchen supplies for my freshman dorm. After that, I was financially independent in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Panicking about the idea of debt, I began a babysitting job in a $13 million Upper West Side apartment my second week in the city. As I walked through the apartment, art just ugly enough to be considered interesting adorned the walls as chandeliers hung above the children's beds. For the first time in my life, I saw what real wealth was.
What shocked me most about attending school in NYC was that many, if not most of my peers, do not work. They live in apartments paid for by their parents at upward of $3,000 a month, an amount greater than either of my parents has ever paid in rent for themselves. The only apartment I could find in my budget is an hour commute each way. Still, the city is a constant credit card transaction and I'm bad at saying no. When I go out, I try to limit myself by ordering the cheapest thing on the menu, ending the night sober and at least $20 broker.
When I moved into my new apartment, however, I was genuinely proud. It felt like a direct result of my hard work and the first sign of my life of stability. Although I have roommates, they are college students like me. The apartment itself is new, the appliances all shinier than any other place I've lived. From the roof, the city lights dance like stars.
I flew "home," if I can even call it that anymore, for one week in August of 2025. Two layovers and 2,500 miles later, I landed in the rapidly growing mountain valley where I grew up. It had only been a year since I had first left for college, but much had changed. My mother, without telling me, had sold off most of my things and left our old house for good when her boyfriend at the time vanished before their lease renewal. Let down but not surprised, I mourned the house. It wasn't my childhood home, but we had lived there for the longest time out of any house I'd ever lived in: two years.
I wished I could've said goodbye, and that she hadn't sold my belongings without my knowledge, but the worst part was that she hadn't told me she had nowhere to go. Chronic pain and an attention to detail that drove her colleagues insane had led her to self employment selling items from estates. Money stretched thin, and without anyone to cosign a lease with her, she would never be able to qualify for a new home. Without any savings, she was — wrongfully — advised to take out a small loan to apply for a new apartment. When that apartment fell through, she began reaching out to friends, desperate for anything.
That's when she found what she called her "off-the-grid tiny home;" a 200-square-foot, one-bedroom house located on a dirt lot plot with no electricity and no water. Like many things, she kept all this from me until the last minute, when I received a mysterious card in the mail explaining her new situation; she's always loved analog. She said she enjoyed not paying rent or bills, and she seemed to be making the best of a bad situation. However, it was evident that there was a catch, as there usually is when she keeps things from me.
When I visited at the end of my summer break, I spent a week with her in my hometown, feeling disoriented and displaced. While I stayed with my grandparents and my boyfriend's parents, my mother and I would venture out during the day. We would discuss our lives, me with my steady job and doing well in school, her self-employed and semi-homeless. I kept asking myself: Is it my responsibility to help her, or is it still her obligation as my mother to help me?
When we caught up over coffee, it seemed like everything was OK. On the final night of my stay as we stood outside her car in a gas station parking lot she confessed that she wasn't just living "off the grid" — she was living in a squatter house. The tiny home had been "inherited" by her friend's son after his girlfriend allegedly overdosed and died in it. What followed was a confusing story that ended with the deed to the house supposedly being written to her on a napkin. Besides the fact that the squatter house wasn't cut out for the four seasons, it had an expiration date. Luxury condos were being built across the street and she'd have to vacate the house when they were built. I was terrified to ask her what her plan was, because I knew she didn't have one.
When I left Idaho, I felt even more lost. A sense of guilt constantly consumed me in my everyday life in New York: It felt privileged to write, privileged to study, privileged to live in New York City at all. This was exacerbated last July, when Idaho criminalized sleeping in anything other than a house within city limits, including cars. Claiming to outlaw "public camping," local advocates argue it will actually serve to make life even more difficult for those facing homelessness.
The last time I spoke to my mother, she was couch-hopping, but as the weather warms into summer, people become less sympathetic. Even during the brutal cold, when the lack of electricity in the tiny home became debilitating, there had been times when she had to sleep there covered by layers and layers of quilting, because she had nowhere else to stay. As the condos across the street continue to be built, she worries that soon she will have nowhere left to go, not even her own car.
New York City may be full of progressives, but it is equally full of people who are out of touch with my reality. Some people I encounter are horrified by seeing a homeless person on the street, while others completely infantilize them while reminding me to say "houseless." I often wonder how they would react if I told them my situation — my mother's situation. It's likely they've never actually known anyone who was homeless.
Today I hung a poster in my room: The Velvet Underground & Nico. During one of our stints of instability during my childhood, my mother was in a Velvet Underground cover band, starring as Nico. I was banned from touching her long blonde wig. Now, as an "adult," I have long blonde hair myself.
In therapy, we talk about "yes and." Yes, I resent my mother for a life of instability and I love her for introducing me to art, culture and what it means to be a person. Yes, her lifestyle confuses me, even sometimes embarrasses me, and I feel so much sympathy for her. She desires and deserves to actually live in this world, not just survive.
When I learned about the Idaho bill, I couldn't help but think back to our walk to get coffee when I last visited. A man was sitting on the street in the hot desert sun with a sign asking for money. As everyone else walked past, my mom dug through her wallet to find whatever change she could. With a smile, she handed him the last of her cash.
Sky Cambron is a freelance writer, editor and journalist based out of New York City. While enamored by international politics, her current path of study, she finds herself drawn to the power of individual narrative in highlighting large-scale issues. You can find her writing here at Huffpost, The Monitor and on Substack.
