“I just want people to hear my story. I'm sure there are other people that are going through this.”
Tiana is adamant about sharing her story with the hope that others see her perseverance through circumstances of blatant injustice, and, in turn, find their own strength.
Imagine living in your Austin, Texas, home for four years, raising your family, and trying to make ends meet when suddenly your stable surroundings shift without warning. That’s part of Tiana’s story—a mother of four with eight grandchildren—who felt pressured by her apartment manager to quickly find a new place for her family to live. She is a Section 8 housing recipient and believes apartment officials were not accommodating because of her Federal housing voucher and unfairly forced her out.
“I had been waiting for a year and a half to transfer apartments. We kept getting the runaround,” said Tiana, who feared the lack of action by apartment management would eventually lead to a bigger issue.
She felt leaving her home was the best option to avoid being evicted and ruining her credit. Her instincts were accurate, but she soon discovered that moving out would not be as easy as she thought. After identifying a new apartment complex, and giving notice that she was moving, Tiana says her plans were blocked, and her voice was unheard.
“[Management] ended up telling me that I got denied. And I was like, ‘On what grounds?’ and they were like, ‘You're being evicted,’” she said, recounting the conversation. “And I'm like, ‘No, I'm not. I did a notice to vacate and I have the evidence and everything.’”
“They just did not want to believe me.”
Tiana says her housing situation unraveled when her previous apartment manager wrote a statement saying she was getting evicted. That eviction notice became an instant obstacle.
Days of repeatedly explaining her family’s situation to local housing authorities and Legal Aid turned into weeks of unanswered questions with no resolutions. Nowhere else to turn, Tiana moved in with her daughter—who managed to secure an apartment of her own shortly before Tiana made the decision to leave.
“I ended up moving out of the apartment anyway. And ever since then, I've been without at home,” said Tiana, who revealed in heart-wrenching detail that her family’s unstable housing predicament also took a toll on her 16-year-old son. “[He] has been out of school since we've been without a home. He's in high school. He has not been in school since we left. We don't have an address to provide or anything, or a way to even get him to school.”
Tianna believes many other families in the complex were displaced in a similar fashion.
“We didn't do anything to get evicted or anything like that. We hadn't gotten any violations. We were pretty quiet. We didn't do anything to deserve this. It was just someone who came in with power and took over. A lot of us got evicted.”
According to Tiana, the apartment manager was ultimately fired for the way she handled her situation, but no correction was made. Adding insult to injury, Tiana’s daughter was no longer supposed to be on the apartment lease because she moved out on her own—the complex failed to remove her name, and the same eviction notice is now linked to Tiana’s daughter and their respective credit reports.
The ripple effect of not having permanent housing stretches as far as it does wide for Tiana’s family, who now all live together in her daughter’s apartment.
“There's 13 of us. And we try to keep from getting seen because then we take the chance of all 13 of us being on the street with nowhere to go. So it has impacted us a lot… We didn't do anything and we have to deal with this. I have to fight for our name back.”
As she fights through the red flags caused by the erroneous eviction notice, her family tries to stay under the radar by often shuffling from a hotel to other places and back to her daughter’s apartment so that it doesn’t appear that all 13 are under the same roof.
Tiana admits that sometimes the magnitude of her family’s current living arrangement is overwhelming mentally, physically, and financially, but she finds spiritual upliftment and unrelenting support through the UpTogether community platform— a secure online space where members connect and share resources.
“The prayer group that I'm in, they give me a lot of motivation and prayers. They're like, “You know, you got this. It's okay that you're going through this. At the end of it there's going to be light.” It's a motivation, it just keeps me going,” she said. “I do a lot of venting right there in the prayer group, and they all reach out and they have their little sayings.”
“It's good to know that there's other people that are going through situations either like this or probably worse than this. It helps me remember that there is someone that's probably going through worse than you are, so you have to just keep going because you could be that motivation for that person.”
The online support of the UpTogether Community reflects what Tiana says she also witnessed in the greater Austin community during the unprecedented snow storm of 2021 that left tens of thousands of residents without power.
“We had no power for three days. We were basically just out there on our own. Everyone pretty much came together. If we needed water, food, anything, our community was there for us,” said Tiana whose family pitched in to help others during the 72-hour ordeal.
“We were handing out food, trying to do whatever to stay warm. People were giving their cars so others would be able to charge up phones. I never experienced anything like that before.”
That willingness to share whatever they have is a strength of Tiana’s family. She and her older children support one another by pooling their resources. Tiana is the primary caregiver to her eight grandkids while their parents work.
“I'm a homebody. I like to be with the grandkids. I like to have family time—arts and crafts and bake cakes,” she shared while admitting she has a few special family recipes. Sometimes Tiana would sell her tasty treats, homemade cinnamon rolls, and other baked goods, or handmade crafts to friends and longtime customers. She intends to resume sales once the family finds adequate living space and she can bring her cooking and craft equipment from out of storage.
In the meantime, Tiana is making strides with eliminating her debts and increasing her credit score. She is hopeful those actions will bring her closer to reaching her ultimate goal of owning a home.
“We want to own some land with our house so the kids can go rip and run, [ride] ATVs, whatever they want. I want a garden, I want rose bushes, all of that,” she said.