Dana, 46, and Calista, 43, are two women in Florida who turned to the subreddit as they reckoned with the possibility of being evicted due to prolonged unemployment.

Calista tells WIRED that she has applied to more than a thousand full-time positions since losing her remote job in February 2024 but can’t seem to land an interview. She says she’s three months behind on rent. “I’ve never been close to homelessness like this before. It’s a new experience,” she says. “It’s very helpful to see the stories from other people, see the things they’ve tried, just that solidarity.”

Dana, who has extensive work experience in software development, says she has been laid off four times since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, most recently in November, in part due to the AI boom. A single mother, she has discussed the possibility of living in a tent with her son, who recently graduated from high school. “So many people are in similar situations,” Dana says of the stories she’s read online. “It’s honestly been the most helpful from a mental perspective. I don’t feel so alone.” This is contrary, she says, to the stigmatization of poverty that she feels in her own city.

Politicians and commentators who demonize the homeless population as mentally ill drug addicts—such as former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who ran a failed mayoral campaign in Los Angeles that characterized them as “zombies” on “super meth”—are distorting the issues at play, says Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco.

“What we’re seeing in the numbers of people experiencing homelessness isn’t that we suddenly have this increase in people with mental health or substance use problems,” she says. “What we have is that the rent is too damn high.”

The cruel ways unhoused people are depicted in the media add “to the already very heavy burden of homelessness,” Kushel continues, with groups like r/almosthomeless countering those narratives and making people feel seen.

Keith, 35, in South Carolina, says he attempted suicide in 2023 after a long battle with alcoholism. He recounts how he survived jumping off a bridge but broke his back. After he received a spinal fusion, he found it difficult to work or do much of anything physical because of his injury, and finally he wound up homeless. He took to sleeping in the woods outside a hospital where he says he regularly sought assistance. “I was just staying there, like trying to get into the mental health department or something like that,” Keith says. “They would just turn you away.”

Later, Keith says, he secured a spot at a local Salvation Army shelter, found a job at a gas station, and in January made the transition into a studio apartment, staying sober and “building something that resembled a normal life,” he says. Yet lately he has started to worry that he’s “watching years of progress disappear in slow motion.” A succession of restaurant jobs, including dishwashing and prep work, have proven impossible with his back problem, and he has avoided further medical treatment for fear of the cost. Now he expects to be evicted, and he’s dreading a return to an unhoused existence.