If I had parents who would plausibly have kicked me out, I would have been a totally different person, so who knows what I would have done. But assuming both parents got mind altering brain tumors, I would have moved in with my best friend’s family. He was off living at his school, so there would have been room.
A year and a half later I was mostly economically independent and going off to university so that would have been that. Thank God for the welfare state!
I just asked the lil’wrekker the question ( she recently turned 18). After a concerned look on her face, I explained is was on the message board.
She immediately said she would call her best friend and go there. After that she asked would she have her car and debit card? I told her NO!, Then she would call her big brother, he lives relatively close. She is on a full ride at her college so she would continue there. Kids have it so much easier than we did.
(Don’t tell her I said that).
Second this. Back then both were more than happy to recruit just about anyone; especially with my “skill sets” in a situation like that.
(A total willingness to survive at any price)
In the UK nobody needs to be homeless unless they want to be, so I would have found some support from the council to get an immediate roof of some sort. Instead of university I’d have had to search for a job immediately. My actual life may have turned out better in the end.
I would have called the cops and told them my parents are trying to illegally evict me from my home.
That would give me another 30 days at least. Probably more once I saw the judge.
The second wasn’t an option for me; even if I’d been in any kind of decent shape, the Spanish military didn’t accept women when I was 18. They started a couple of years later.
Crime or military for me, no doubt about it. I knew all of the right people for each. Having the opportunity to pack up & move away for college allowed me to leave both of those options behind. Picking up the tab for my undergrad work was the nicest thing my parents ever did for me. It’s a kindness that I have tried to repay by funding the educations of others.
It’s a real shame that life can be its most chaotic early on when we’re least capable of dealing with it.
Gone home, as I’d been on my own for a year already by then.
Seriously though, at that age the options are basically 1) Get a job followed by 2) move in with friends. There’s not a whole lot else you can do.
In my case, late 80’s in VA, you couldn’t sign a lease until age 21, so I had to move yearly-ish when friends went in and out of lease agreements. My Mom did at least co-sign a car loan for me, or I wouldn’t have had transport until 21 either.
I tried waitressing which I wasn’t any good at, so I moved to office receptionist, which I was VERY good at. Within a year I moved on to a government contracting job and was doing OK.
I would have ended up at the Navy recruiter and might have even flourished but that’s the last thing my dad wanted for his kids. At the time I didn’t realize how much support the folks were giving us. They made it sound like everybody goes to college so that’s what we did. My heart goes out to those of you who had to deal with such crap at such a young age.
More than one of my more conservative friends has called me soft for supporting my kids over the years. They can’t believe I would give money to an unemployed male child. It’s surprising how many people my age (60’s) believe an 18 year old can walk out into the world and make it without help if they only have enough backbone and grit. I guess that is technically true but I wouldn’t want put one of my kids through that and thank goodness my parents didn’t either. I guess we’re all soft and unmanly in my family. Oh well.
Wow, squatting, huh? Well, you’d have a roof over your head, but what about food, laundry, medical needs, etc?
Its hard to say. For the OPs hypothetical to happen, my life at that time would have had to be very different from how it actually was.
My parents were old, settled and very, very supportive. I graduated US high school the same month as I turned 17.
Of course, that little adventure set me back a year in graduating High School in my own country. I did that about the same time as I turned 20. Teenage me was very much about being good at school and bright as a major source of self-confidence. Flunking out at 18 would require some kind of major crisis or change bigger than the OP. Anyway I was working as a cashier for a major retail chain on Saturdays when 18. Sometimes I’d be moved around to other shops to cover for sick leave on holidays. I am pretty sure I could have had a full position on the spot if I’d asked. And you can’t be homeless here, the local authorities would have given me a place and emergency cash. Especially given the exceptional situation. Also, my oldest sister, or one of my friends would have put me up if I needed it. Or my godparents.
Flunking out might have meant that I just stayed working as a cashier though. Or without the siren song of academia, I’d have stayed on in the army when they asked, or taken that art position. That would have changed the trajectory of my life massively.
I don’t think you know what squatting means.
If my parents said: " you got 2 moths to GTFO", that would be one thing. But to just arbitrarily say: " GTFO now!" Would be cruel. Which is why there are laws to protect tenants from such nonsense.
Not so far from what happened with me. I knew from the time that I was 16 that I would not be welcome in my parent’s house as an adult, so at least it wasn’t much of a suprise. Fortunately, I was able to graduate high school before I turned 18, so I had that under my belt, at least.
I couldn’t go to college, as your parents are expected to help pay for it, and they made far too much for me to get any financial aid, so I just went out and got an apartment. I already had a job in a restaurant that paid my bills well enough, and pretty much went from there.
I did try to go to college a couple of times, but was unable to complete my degree with the need to also be working full time to support myself. I would make it 3/4’s the way through a program, and then just burn out from working 2 jobs and trying to hold down a full course load as well. Every teacher would be telling me that I should be spending 20 hours a week or more on studying for their class, which is just not possible if you have to work and have any sorts of fantasies of ever sleeping again.
But yeah, you do what anyone who isn’t living with their parents has to do, get a job and pay your own bills.
The kids who got screwed over the most in college were not the poor ones like me, but the middle class kids whose parents weren’t helping them with school. The default assumptions for the FAFSA are really messed up. As I mentioned upthread, it wasn’t even enough for them that I was legally emancipated. They wanted letters and bank statements proving I was receiving nothing from my parents. It was redonk.
My aunt was one credit away from her biology degree when she burned out in a similar way. Her mom’s new husband forced her to stop helping my Aunt with school so she was working 60 hours a week. She appealed to the professor to figure out the bare minimum needed to pass, and he said, “nobody works and takes my class. You’re dropped.”
Like I said, I know the advantages I had. I came to the conclusion that the best thing to be in college is dirt poor and really good at academics. The pattern even repeated itself in graduate school, though I did not get a full ride, they paid half my tuition (almost unheard of), both on account of financial hardship and past achievements. I didn’t earn being smart OR poor, so really I’m just lucky. (I’m still swimming in student loan debt so don’t think I got off Scott-free.)
You are lucky you had the forethought and brains to know a good thing when you saw it Spice. Your existence and mother issues would have made a lesser person to grow despondent and just give the Hell up. Good on you!
My mother is the one who instilled in me the value of education. And for all her faults she also told me I could do whatever the hell I wanted with my life as long as I was happy. She allowed me to pursue whatever interested me. She invested time and money into my pursuit of the arts, and we were not wealthy. I was in marching band, jazz band, theater, school choir, church choir, youth group, and a bunch of academic groups too. (She did once ground me for a year from band over something stupid, but generally she was on point for supporting my interests.) It’s especially remarkable because as an engineer type, she didn’t have a creative bone in her body. She could not relate at all to my interests, but she supported them.
That all stopped the year she tried to prevent my graduation, but it was a power and control thing. She was trying to make me helpless so I would have to return home because she couldn’t handle not being able to control me any longer (another confession she made to my Aunt.) The woman is mentally ill and she just doesn’t know how to deal with her emotions without hurting people. It would be psychologically easier if she were 100% evil but she gave me a lot of positive things too, things that will always be with me. I wish to hell it were enough to salvage that relationship.
Technically i dont think you’d qualify as a tenant?
Not sure what country or state you are in, where i am at, if you are not paying and can
document it, you are not a tenant and pretty much out you go.
It doesn’t work like that in Texas. I believe the rule is if you’ve stayed at the residence for more than 72hrs, the owners can’t force you to leave with out a notice of eviction.
In Florida you’d still have to file an unlawful detainer suit to forcibly remove a non-tenant guest. It’s similar to an eviction but can be done without notice. It will still take 2-3 weeks to get the person out of the house. If during that proceeding the kid can demonstrate they are actually a tenant, something as simple as required choirs can establish tenancy, the court will kick it out and you’d be back to square 1, starting an eviction. So sometimes just giving a 30 day notice so you can evict instead it a better choice.
I don’t know of any state where someone could be legally ejected from their primary residence without notice or due process. This doesn’t stop parents from illegally evicting their children all the time. If the parents throw the kid out, the kid will still be homeless. They could sue the parent for their damages, a judgement 2 months later won’t do a whole lot of good either. If the parents refuse to pay collection could take years.
Sorry, but that isn’t true. It’s a common belief, but it’s false. As a single adult, that isn’t a veteran, is not escaping domestic violence, isn’t a pregnant woman (over a certain number of weeks pregnant) with no mental illness, the council have no immediate responsibility to house you. They have the obligation to offer ‘assistance’, which can be as little as saying “Sorry, we can’t help, try asking a homeless charity”.
The Homelessness Reduction act, which is due to come into force in April this year gives a new target of offering some form of shelter to those not in the above groups (unless they’re deemed ineligible) within 56 days, but many councils have said they don’t have the funding to achieve this.
Even when they do, they’re classed as low priority, and accommodation can be appalling, and the rules are full of loopholes; to take a local example, a 19 year old guy in currently living in a doorway in this town, who became homeless, was placed in a house with (his description) 4 junkies, who threatened him and stole all his stuff. After complaints saying he felt unsafe led nowhere, he left, hoping to crash on someone’s sofa for a bit instead, and was then told that he’d voluntarily made himself homeless, so the council had no further obligation to help him at all.
A house in my old town, privately owned but tenants were placed by the council as ‘partially supported living’ (for those with some psychological issues who may need occasional help, but not day-to-day support), had no functioning toilet, no kitchen, water running down the walls but not from the taps,and had raw sewage under the floorboards. It came to light after a tenant died in his bedroom, and no-one noticed for several months. If you are offered a room in a house like that and refuse, the council have no obligation to offer any alternatives.
Homelessness is far from voluntary for many people here, however comforting it may be to think so.