I first posted this in my first version of this blog on October 24, 2008

I was walking home from the subway today thinking about my housing problem. About two months ago I was on the fence as to whether we should leave our two bedroom apartment in the Morningside Heights area of New York City and move to someplace for less money and more room before my 20-year-old daughters baby comes in January. three weeks ago I asked the young woman who had crashed on our living room sofa after losing a potential home to join our family. Two days ago, as I was talking about how no more young people are coming into this house until the baby is ready to walk, my daughter’s girlfriend told me she had been kicked out of her home with no money and no place to go. And yes, I said “yes”.

So, my nerves have been on edge because I am perfectly happy about them all, but it’s a small apartment and growing smaller. I am retiring a guide dog and hoping she will be able to stay with us which means by the time my grandbaby is born or I get my next guide dog, whichever comes sooner, our household will have swelled to four adults, two large dogs, a baby and a cat. We won’t even mention my daughter’s recent report of efforts to allow said cat to breed – the one we thought had already been neutered but which went into heat recently.

Almost at my front door and not knowing if I’d have three square feet to turn around in after entering, the nursery rhyme about the old woman with too many children who lived in a shoe popped into my head. I just looked it up and it is not terribly inspiring:

There was an old woman,
Who lived in a shoe;
She had so many children,
She didn’t know what to do.
She gave them some broth,
Without any bread;
She whipped them all soundly,
And sent them to bed.

Well, not the solution as to the best way to treat anyone, never mind youth who spent too much of their lives in our foster care system.

the more humane and boring answer is to give notice and pray. Anyone reading this can pray for us to find a great large apartment we can afford within ten minutes by subway from where we are now. And while you are at it – four bedrooms, a really large living room, laundry in the building, elevator or ground floor, near a good park and a nice place by the river, and maybe a yard, patio, or access to the roof. And a nice honest landlord. Yeah, right.