Lori Teresa Yearwood: My bill for being homeless in Salt Lake City was $54,000

The former site of the shelter where Yearwood stayed while she was homeless in Salt Lake City.My descent into homelessness felt as though it happened in the blink of an eye. It was as if one moment I was standing in a meadow next to my horses, stroking their manes, and the next I was lying inside a plastic garbage bag on a park bench, wrapping clothes around my shivering body.

These bills are another way that American society criminalizes people experiencing homelessness — hidden penalties that can start with the towing and impoundment of the vehicles people sleep in and that can continue with a long list of misdemeanors, such as loitering, camping, asking for money in public and even standing in one place for too long.

Overwhelmed by all the trauma, I tried to sell my business, but none of the offers I received came through. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the throes of post-traumatic stress syndrome and therefore was not thinking clearly. All I knew was that I couldn’t deal with all the losses. I began to shut myself in for hours at a time. When I was unable to pay the rent, my landlord asked me to leave.

He began appearing every morning at the entrance of the shelter, and he would follow me until I got to the public library. One day he said he would give me a duffel bag to replace my garbage bags and told me I could keep some of my other belongings in a storage shed he owned. When we arrived, he pushed me inside, where he sexually assaulted me. Two days passed before he rolled open the door and finally let me out.

In the middle of all this, I went to a nonprofit group in Salt Lake City that helps people with their credit, and its financial advisers noticed that two of the ambulance rides were placed for collection on the same day, for almost the exact same amount, leading them to suspect that I had been charged twice for the same trip.

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