Three women in Los Angeles and Seattle talk about how they ended up without a home and how they survived the first night

Michelle Ducoing, 24, Los Angeles

I spent my first night homeless in this Santa Monica playground.

I was 21 and had recently been let go from my job as a manager at a pizza place, which meant I couldn’t pay my $600 per month rent and lost my home. I’d also just broken up with my boyfriend, who was a wonderful, kind person. I was so broken. My mental health hadn’t always been up to par and I felt like I couldn’t focus on reality.

My mom paid for a hotel for a couple of nights but she couldn’t keep doing that. Staying with her wasn’t an option. We’d fought a lot in the past. She’s from Mexico and a firm believer in God and when I started exploring different ways of belief, we had a massive argument. I’d caused a lot of problems tied to having bipolar disorder. It’s not that she doesn’t love me, she just values her own emotional wellbeing.

That night I got dinner at Chipotle. I had my luggage full of clothing and my cameras and my laptop – I was scared someone would take my stuff so I hid it in the bushes in the park. I got my normal thing: a burrito with barbacoa, sour cream, lettuce, the medium sauce, pinto beans and white rice. Then came straight back to make sure my stuff wasn’t gone. My cameras were important to me because I aspired to be a photographer – I still do. I had lenses, my flash, my tripod, eight years’ worth of photos on my laptop. I thought I was going to document stuff but my mind was too fixed on having a roof over my head.

I wish I had better adjectives to describe how sad I felt. Even while I was eating my food, I was sobbing and thinking: “Why am I eating this in the park? I could be inside. Wait, no, I can’t be inside.” I cried all night.

I used my luggage as a pillow and slept in the fetal position with my camera stuff tucked under my right arm and my left arm over it. I was so afraid. I must have fallen asleep around 1 or 2am. A guy working in the park woke me up about 5am, saying: “The sprinklers are going to turn on, you need to move.”

There was no way to prepare for what was coming: someone I trusted stole my things; I was violently assaulted in my sleep. I was basically falling off – well, almost falling off the edge of the earth.

I slept outside on and off for seven months. I’ve been in transitional housing now for two years and take medication that’s keeping me stable. I come back to this park sometimes just to relax and remember what I’ve been through.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paige Conca, 35, plays the banjo at her camp on the side of I-90 in Seattle, Washington. She has been homeless for four years. Photograph: Annabel Clark/The Guardian

Paige Conca, 35, Seattle

My first night on the street was when my boyfriend, Bill, threw me out. I was in the shower and he asked me: “Are you getting high?” Quicker than I could think, I lied and said no. He opened the shower door, saw my drugs and told me to leave.

That was about four years ago. It was horrible. This was supposed to be me starting my real life. I’d moved from California to Seattle to be with him. I’d never had a real boyfriend as an adult, or even my own personal life. For me, this was: “Now we’re going to show them.”

I think I slept in a park that night. I was new to town and didn’t know Seattle well. I’d grown up in California and even though I’d spent a lot of time travelling and living in my van, I’d always had a bedroom to crash in at my grandmother’s. But my grandmother had recently passed away.

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She was the awesomest. She took good care of me and my mother, who was a severe alcoholic. And kept the most amazing home you’d ever seen – an English brick house in North Hollywood. My grandfather had been a pianist, called Mark McIntyre, who wrote for people like Sinatra and Nat King Cole. My aunt and my mother [Patience and Prudence McIntyre] actually had a gold record when they were 11 or something with a song called Tonight You Belong to Me. My father was a gifted drummer, too, but also a heroin addict.

When I left school at 16, I met this guy who turned me on to the Grateful Dead, and I started traveling to shows. Lord knows why, but I got into heroin. I should have known better given that my parents were screwed up. Perhaps subconsciously I wanted to understand what was so great that they chose this over their kid.

I got to the point where I needed $50 a day for drugs. I didn’t want to steal and the thing I could live easiest with was prostitution. But I ended up serving a prison sentence for it and possession of heroin. It was during my last week inside that my grandmother died.

That first night on the street I was devastated. I thought: “Wait, there’s no home to go back to. I’m really homeless now.” With all the moving, I lost my grandmother’s photo albums and jewelry. I’ve been homeless since.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bonnie, 31, at her camp in Seattle, Washington. She was evicted from her studio in downtown Seattle last summer. Photograph: Annabel Clark/The Guardian

Bonnie, 31, Seattle

Not long ago my life was being a single mom, living in Lynnwood, Washington, getting up at 5.30am every day to get my kids ready and to go to work in sales at T-Mobile. I had a routine but when I was going through an emotional time, I fell hard into methamphetamine with my on-and-off boyfriend at the time. We had a young son who was taken away from me because of methamphetamine use. I also had two older sons taken at the same time. Without my sons, I became seriously depressed and followed my boyfriend to Seattle, leaving my apartment and moving my stuff with me.

He was staying in a room with a public bathroom in the hallway. It was meant to be somewhere to work, but a friend let us rent it for $300 a month. It was basically a flophouse. We were hanging by a string. We’d been there two months when my boyfriend left me.

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Shortly after, the building managers served an eviction notice. I was packing when the sheriff came and escorted me out of the building before I had time to even find my shoes. They left me outside with one trunk of my belongings and a suitcase of clothes, saying they’d be back up with the rest of my stuff. I had a really nice wardrobe and other furniture. All my family photos were there, and my kids’ boxes with their baby books and hospital bracelets. I love shoes and had about 60 pairs. There were my journals I’d been writing for over 10 years.

I waited on the sidewalk, barefoot, for six or seven hours. I remember thinking I was a failure. I was heartbroken. I was lonely. I missed my kids.

They never did bring the rest of my stuff out. I found out later they’d brought a junk truck to the other side of the building and emptied the studio. I was baffled; I didn’t think legally they could do that.

I went to a nearby campsite and a guy got me a tent. I set it up and lay there for hours, just putting together all the pieces of my life. I thought about how you can go from everything being perfect to: “I don’t know how I’m going to survive this.”

I’ve been on the streets almost a year. Seven months ago, I met a man who has saved my life. He was a security guard at a gas station where I went every night to get food and use the restroom. He’s 32, goes to school full-time, has a car and has never had a drug in his life. He’s living out here with me for now and while we’re not going to be this way forever, we’ve got a good setup. I’ve gone from having nothing to more than I could ask for.

Interviews have been edited for clarity