To the editor:

I am a master’s educated woman. A woman who has dedicated the last 20 years to community service and leadership. I hold international, national, state and local awards for my 30-50 hours a week dedication. I chose care of disabled family members over a promising career. Doing the “right thing” over personal gain and financial success.

Aging, being a crime victim and life have thrown me some above average, life-changing curveballs, leaving me with some physical disabilities, CPTSD and depression. I have worked very hard to stay on course and meet all my responsibilities and obligations.

Housing being a top priority for me, raising a disabled nephew and having ESA animals. I have never once been late or missed a rent payment, in the same location 34 years.

Yet, here I stand on the precipice of homelessness.

I never saw this coming. My apartment and yard were my home of 34 years. I did not have the knowledge, resources or experience to deal with my situation.

The alarming fact, after 10 months of daily research, is, neither does my community. All safety nets to support the low income, aged, disabled, in Lehigh County, and beyond are seriously flawed, don’t exist, or have been drained of resources almost since the beginning of the year.

Multiple agencies refer you over and over to the same dead end resources. Outsourced, faith based organizations can’t effectively or efficiently handle the volume of “need.” Online feedback as well as personal experience, suggests reaching out to them fruitless and dehumanizing.

This is the confirmed reality. HUD, while being a Federal program is managed within states, by counties. On the rare occasion they are open to accepting applications, the waiting list in Lehigh and surrounding counties is a minimum of two years for HUD/ Section 8 housing. Senior and disabled housing within a 30 mile radius had a 5-10 year waiting list, on average. The proposed rental assistance, security deposit assistance, moving funding is elusive or nonexistent.

So, how did I get here? By greedy, underhanded management companies who con private landlords into reluctantly selling their properties. Riding on the coattails of an out-of-control rental market, in the Lehigh Valley. Lying and deceiving long-term renters regarding their fates. Even ones like me, willing to absorb and make sacrifices to pay much higher rents. We are the trash, the riffraff that must be thrown out like garbage. Money and greed trumping human decency.

Endless letters, phone calls, visits to federal, state, local and community leaders were dead ends. They are grossly misinformed of the realities of the current housing situation and nonexistent resources. Many merely had no response, or a curt, “good luck.”

So as the clock ticks towards homelessness, my disabled body and very ill ESA pet will not survive winter in a small car. I ponder all the sacrifices I have made for my family, my community. Was most of my adult life in vain?

Every fiber of my being is screaming, HELP! Clearly my community, my government or even the heavens above can’t hear me. We, myself and others, in my situation, are the unseen, the unheard.

Janet L. Hunt

Alburtis