This story first appeared on ebar.com March 31, 2021:
Charlie Uher had never expected to be living out of his car.
The 67-year-old gay man told the Bay Area Reporter he had been living in a manufactured home in the East Bay community of Bay Point until a little more than three years ago.
“I had a dispute with the people who owned the land, so they kicked me out,” Uher said. “I bought the manufactured home because my mother passed and left me with some money. I thought that when I die they’d carry me out of there. … They gave me $4,000 for it, then turned around and sold it for $20,000.”
Uher, who hails from Chicago and lived for some time in San Francisco, parked on the streets in Bay Point for about two and a half years until he found housing at St. Paul’s Commons in Walnut Creek through the Trinity Center, which is a non-residential nonprofit serving working-class and homeless people in Walnut Creek and central Contra Costa County.
Uher, who said he’d been on the wait list since he lost the house, said he is lucky that he found housing before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last March; he’d been able to use a gym for showers, and various bathrooms around town during the time he’d been living in his vehicle.
After Uher got two jobs and had an increase in his income, he saw a substantial rent increase in February from the Housing Authority. Formerly paying $488 for his place, Uher has been paying $1,000 since January — and doesn’t know how much longer he can afford it, since he is paying most of his income in rent now that he no longer has the jobs.
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John Ferrannini 