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Now that Jackie, 52, has a place to call home, everything is easier.
For more than two decades, Jackie was in and out of homelessness, and she is painfully aware of the toll living on the streets took on her. It negatively affected her physical and mental health, and her relationship with her children.
Her housing instability started with a divorce from her husband, which left her a single mother of five. She spent years searching for steady work but mostly landed jobs that didn’t pay a living wage. She leaned on her family to help her care for her children while struggling to manage her mental health. Eventually, those relationships dissolved, life became too much, and Jackie lost everything.
Jackie remembers thinking the cycle of her addiction and homelessness was impossible to break. Eventually, she started receiving mental health services through New Narrative, a Washington County-based provider that offers integrative mental health care and housing services. From there, Jackie got connected to the tools she needed to persist through the challenges she’d been facing for so long. Most importantly, New Narrative helped Jackie secure rent assistance that provides long-term housing stability.
“I was finally able to get into my own place,” Jackie said. “That's when things began to shift. It all started coming together.”
Today Jackie lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Forest Grove, where her black-and-white dog keeps her company. With a stable home, Jackie has been able to sustain her sobriety for more than three years. She can also manage the essentials, including health insurance, disability services and ongoing mental health care.
“Stable housing means the world to me now. I pay my bills before I do anything,” Jackie said. “That’s not how it used to be.”
Jackie pays her rent with help from a Regional Long-Term Rent Assistance (RLRA) voucher, which is funded through the regional Supportive Housing Services measure. In Washington County, more than 1,900 households have been housed with RLRA vouchers since voters passed the measure in 2020.
Jackie said that her apartment provides stability and security, as well as a sense of belonging; she knows her neighbors, and the apartment complex’s maintenance staff give treats to her dog.
“This means the ability to function every day in a way where I can do things I want to do,” she said, “This is home."
This story is courtesy of Metro's housing department; we are thankful for their efforts in crafting this piece. An in-depth video version of Jackie's story can be seen on their Instagram account.