by Sarah Moughty

San Francisco is the most expensive place in America to find a home, but that doesn’t deter the 400,000 people coming each year to the Bay Area in search of a new home and a new life.

Eleven-year-old Sera, her sister and her mother moved to San Francisco in 2009. But when the economy collapsed, her mother lost her job and the family now survives on her $600 monthly unemployment checks.

After five months in a shelter and more than a year in transitional housing, the family has moved to a one-room rent-subsidized apartment in the Tenderloin — a neighborhood synonymous with drugs and violence — while they wait for subsidized housing to come through. But they are just one missed rental payment away from returning to the shelter.

VIDEO CREDITS:

PRODUCED, FILMED AND EDITED BY

Jezza Neumann

ONLINE EDITOR

Michael Amundson