Suburbanites are becoming the new face of homelessness in America

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/suburbanites-are-becoming-the-new-face-of-homelessness-in-america/



Suburbanites are becoming the new face of homelessness in America
The Guardian
14 Oct 2015 at 14:03 ET

“People look at me and say, ‘You’re not homeless,’” says Rita Sharratt, a 57-year-old grandmother of three. “And I look right at them and say, ‘Yes I am.’”

Sharratt is sitting at a table at the New Life Evangelistic Center , a homeless shelter in the heart of downtown St Louis. New Life is a 25-minute drive from Bridgeton, Missouri, the quiet suburban town where Sharratt lived until 2013. In her former life, Sharratt was a telecommunications specialist, earning an average of $50,000-$60,000 a year. In 2000 her husband fell ill, and as his health worsened she quit her job to care for him full time. They lived off his retirement money and Social Security until February 2012, when he passed away.

That’s when everything fell apart. Sharratt, now in her 50s, couldn’t find a job in a St Louis economy decimated by the recession, and felt discriminated against due to her age. She burned through her savings, and in 2013 foreclosure on her house began. Sharratt discovered that her mortgage lender had sold her bank loan to another financial establishment, but had written it only in her deceased husband’s name.

“Bank of America would not talk with me to negotiate, no matter what I tried,” she recalls. “They said they couldn’t because my name wasn’t on the loan. In September 2013 they kicked me and my grandchildren out.”