Javonna Lee hasn’t been sleeping much.

For the last few months, she, her husband and their four kids have been staying in the living room of her sister’s place: 10 people crammed into a dimly-lit three-bedroom apartment in Reading, Pennsylvania.

At night, Javonna, 33, and her husband share an air mattress with their two toddlers, while their two teenagers curl up on small, worn-out couches. On a good night, the adults get a couple of hours of sleep before the two-year-old wakes up, or someone steps over their air mattress coming home late after a night out.

“We are like smack dab in the middle of the living room, so there is absolutely no privacy whatsoever,” Lee said. “We are always waking up.”

Their lives were turned upside down by a simple mistake. Javonna’s husband supports the family on about $13 dollars an hour. Last summer he was making a little extra money working on a moving crew in a rented truck and he lost his wallet containing a prepaid debit card loaded with his paycheck. With no bank account and no savings, Javonna and her husband quickly fell behind on rent.

They were in eviction court in July. Their landlord said the couple was chronically behind on rent. By August, they were out of their home.

Javonna, her husband and kids stayed in a storage unit for a week after they were evicted, then spent some time in emergency housing before bouncing to her sister’s apartment.

The eviction didn’t just take the family’s home, it took their community, too. Javonna’s sister has been violating the terms of her lease by hosting them, so they try to be seen and heard as little as possible. At their last apartment, Javonna helped organize a block party; now she can’t even sit on the front stoop.

Reading, where Javonna grew up and has lived almost her whole life, now feels unfamiliar and cold. She wants to move.

“[I want to move to] Pottstown, Spring City, Philadelphia, I could go on,” she said, trailing off with a giggle that seemed close to tears. “Anywhere. I want to leave here.”

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