HOMELESS TO TINY HOME

 NEVER could I have imagined that my husband & I could go from being HOMELESS to living in our dream TINY HOME after what happened to us in Virginia. Yes, that does sound like a bad country song, but we are here to tell you today that it IS POSSIBLE to work your way up from having NO CREDIT OR  JOBS and we’re going to share with you how we did it + ways to avoid it ever happening to you!

So how did a nice young couple like us end up in fear of living on the streets nearly 3 times!? Well, we learned the hard way how being homeless doesn’t just happen to drug addicts or war veterans. It can happen to anyone that has a series of unfortunate events happen to them.

If you didn’t know already, I (Lindsay) and from California and my husband (Jonas) is from Sweden and when we first got married almost 5 years ago, we moved to Sweden and lived there for 3 years. During that time we went on many adventures but realized that we wanted to pursue our dreams in America and after a long hard immigration process, we moved to CA but…

Very unexpectedly, I had a last minute carpal tunnel syndrome surgery 6 WEEKS BEFORE WERE RELOCATING TO AMERICA! Needless to say, when we got to CA I couldn’t work for a while, and then on top of that Jonas had some issues with his social security being spelled wrong which left us both not being to work and our savings drained.

After some seasonal work we tried to start looking for an apartment in California only to realize that no where would even consider us because WE HAD NO CREDIT or RENTAL HISTORY in the USA! This was a very rude and scary awakening for us since in Sweden most landlords only wanted to see an employment letter and references. We literally tried EVERYTHING we could in CA to find a place to live and eventually we realized it was time to move on.

We decided to do something RISKY and DARING to make the most of our situation. We put everything in storage in CA, packed my Grandpa’s old car full of suitcases and set out on a USA roadtrip from the West coast to the East coast! We took the opportunity to volunteer through WORKAWAY which is an amazing work exchange program we had always wanted to try and it all the sudden became the only logical solution!

A charming bed & breakfast and wedding venue in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia agreed to have us for a few months and we spent the springtime living in a little cottage there and working on the farm, helping with the weddings, and had the time of our lives because we had always wanted to try out life as rural innkeepers!

We loved volunteering but knew at some point we’d have to find some source of income and just then we found out about an innkeeping internship opportunity in Virginia, and with 3 days notice we packed up again and moved to the Shenandoah Valley where we thought we finally had found a home and jobs all in one! It seemed too good to be true an then that’s when things took a turn for the worst…

If you want to hear all about what really happened to us in Harrisonburg you can watch the video BELOW but in a nutshell, we became involved with a live in job situation with very dishonest people who took advantage of us and kicked us to the curb. We were just about to start building our savings and credit and became HOMELESS FOR THE 2ND TIME!!!

  We literally had no where to turn to, and decided to put our car in storage and go to Sweden for the summer and try to figure things out! We turned to Workaway again and ended up at the loveliest bed & breakfast in Connecticut where the most welcoming innkeepers restored our faith in the inn industry and treated us like family.

From there, Jonas got the opportunity in New York to work for a pumpkin carving event (that he had worked at in CA, remember that seasonal job I mentioned?) and we found a room to rent in an old house in the Hudson Valley where for the first time in over a year of moving to America started to build our RENTAL HISTORY! HURRAY!

 Thanks to Workaway we now had job experience and amazing references in America from our amazing hosts so I landed a job at a fancy inn and restaurant and we were finally able to be approved for beginner credit cards to start our credit lines!

After the pumpkin job, Jonas found another seasonal job which led to a full-time graphic designer position for him (also a miraculous story we’ll have to tell sometime!) and by that point I had been given a raise at my job JUST WHEN WE ALMOST DIED at the house were living in when an irresponsible land lady left a self cleaning oven on over night and we knew we had to move again!

We put in our 30 days notice without having another place to go yet, but figured we’d already faced worst scrapes! After a few very stressful weeks of looking at apartments in old houses they were either too expensive or just not a right fit. There was just a few days until the end of the month and we thought we were going to end up facing being HOMELESS FOR THE 3RD TIME!

But one day on our endless Craigslist searches, I came across a listing that just said “SMALL COTTAGE” in the headline with no photos and hardly info about it. I called up the landlord and he told me over the phone it’s “VERY SMALL, You’ll really have to love each other to get along here” all the while I’m thinking, if only he knew what we’ve been through!

From the moment we saw the little cottage beside a historic cemetery we knew it was the one AND half the price of most apartments we had been looking at! However, New York is not cheap and funds were still a wee bit tight and we needed to come up with 2 months rent as a security deposit! We applied for a small personal loan and were DENIED because guess what, AGAIN our credit history was too short. Thankfully we had enough savings even if we knew we’d have to eat ramen for a few months!

Isn’t it crazy how life can come full circle? In the early spring of 2016 we found ourselves homeless and staying on a farm volunteering and grew to love the cottage life there and started dreaming of having our own. Flash forward 1 year later and we indeed got to move into our dream tiny house in New York!

So kids, the moral of our story? There’s 3 important things we want you to learn from our mistakes before you either move to another country or want to try out the nomadic life:

1. BUILD YOUR CREDIT & RENTAL HISTORY: If only we had known sooner how important it is to wisely start using a beginner credit card and paying it off instantly.
2. BE BRAVE & CREATIVE: If you ever find yourself in a homeless situation, I’m sure there’s loads of more places you could go to for help like WORKAWAY if you get creative and try something new!
3. UNDERSTAND THE RISK: While living off the grid is exciting, being a nomad also means being address-less, and you won’t be able to get any government help! We “lived in” Georgia, Virginia, Connecticut and it was only until we moved to New York that we had a physical address we could use to become residents, apply to banks, and get health insurance, which turned out to be a pretty difficult task.

Even if our journey has been a rough path we’re glad to share it in hopes of helping others! Dreams really can come true if you have the courage to pursue them, work hard, and never lose hope! Bye For Now,

-It’s A Charming Life