Stephen, whose wife died, leading to financial instability and homelessness, transformed his perspective

Well, back in 2021 my wife passed, uh, we've been together for 20 years and, uh, no longer had the income coming into the household and I became homeless, uh, because I couldn't afford the rent any longer. Very nervous, stressful time knowing that I was going to be evicted, not knowing where I was gonna go. I felt defeated. It's hard to go through, uh, when you've been able to take care of yourself, *** better part of your adult life. I think what they don't see is what that person is actually going through mentally, uh, where they come from, what happened in their lives, any trauma that might have happened, uh, to cause homelessness or to be on the street, the average person doesn't see that it's not always *** bad person who is homeless. You know, *** lot of people go through tough times in their lives and, you know, we have bad things happen to us that are not under our control. There are people out there that probably they were just like you and me and something bad happened to them in their life and now they're going through *** rough patch and all they need is help. If people really understood why people are homeless, uh they may have more compassion for them.