Have you ever been scared that your stuff would be strewn all over the street from being evicted?

Yes, actually, I have been. I wasn’t evicted, but I was scared.

I was about 22. I didn’t know a thing about landlord-tenant law and thought that if I didn’t find a new apartment by the 31st, when my lease expired, I’d be thrown out, literally dumped on the street as you (almost) were. So I grabbed the first apartment I could afford, even though I hated it, and it was a horrible place to live. I was stuck there for a year because of the lease (which I was afraid to break) and moved the minute I could.

That was a lousy thing to do to you or anyone at Christmas. But you were lucky to have an advocate. I was on my own with no guidance and no sense of any rights I might have, and I’d been brought up not to break rules or cause anyone an inconvenience. So I just assumed that the worst would happen and that it would happen to me.