((PKG)) PROFILE OF A HOMELESS WOMAN - MOUANGJOI TRACY SAELEE ((TRT: 08:04)) ((Filmed before the pandemic)) ((Topic Banner: Unhoused in Oakland)) ((Producers: Deana Mitchell, Wendi Jonassen)) ((Camera: Deana Mitchell)) ((Producer/Editor: Jacquelyn De Phillips)) ((Drone Camera: Dariel Medina)) ((Map: Oakland, California)) ((Main characters: 1 female)) ((Sub characters: 1 male, I female)) ((NATS)) ((NATS: Tracy)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Mark Fisher. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I had a big house where everybody comes by. If anyone wants to take a shower, want to eat or whatsoever, you know, wanted some clothes, they always come see me and then they’ll always be taken care of. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) My name is Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee. ((NATS: Tracy)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Oh, look. A cutting board. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I’ve been homeless over a year. Lost employment. And also because the rent increased, it’s too high to afford it. Things went bad. ((NATS: Tracy cooking fish)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) The fish, it got donated this morning. When people donate things, we like usually cook it and share with everyone else. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) This is my community. I've been staying in this area for my whole life. And a lot of these people that is in this homeless encampment is my friends and family and relatives, you know. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) So, even though I wasn't homeless, I was always coming here to visit them and bringing them food or things like that, you know. ((NATS: Tracy reading bullet points for advocacy event)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Housing is human rights. Safety: Women are being raped out here. People are getting burned in the fires. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I am a volunteer. I'm the head administrator of The Village. And I'm helping the founder very closely to help eradicate this homelessness problem, you know. ((NATS: Charlie sings)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Telling the truth isn’t going to be easy. Who broke my window? ((NATS: Charlie laughs)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) They never know who is going to be here next. You know, being homeless is not a crime. You know, it’s not a choice. I know a lot of these people. Like I said, I grew up in this community. And a lot of them knows me, you know, and they respect me because I've always, you know, had a big heart. ((NATS: Tracy helping Charlie and Didi)) ((Tracy)) Put that down. Let’s forget about that. Let’s forget about that. ((Charlie)) You know he’s crazy. He’s cuckoo. ((Tracy)) Alright, I’m going to tell you the good news. You guys are going to leave for five days, right? ((Charlie)) Yeah. ((Tracy)) You leaving for five days? ((Charlie)) After I get her washed up, cleaned up. ((Tracy)) Okay, by the time you get back, your house will be up. ((Charlie)) Oh, I love you. ((Tracy)) You’ll go inside a house instead of a tent. Okay? ((Charlie)) Thank you. ((NATS: Crook and man arguing)) ((Man))…..because he’s a liar, because he’s a liar. ((Crook)) I understand that. ((Charlie to Didi)) Come on baby, let me take you and go get you a shower. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I have six children. I was 13 and I had a child when I was in seventh grade. And by being a young teen mom, you know, we wanted to do the best for our child, right? So, I continued going to school and graduated from high school and proceeded to go to college. But I never finished it because, due to the fact that, you know, just being, just life, you know. Things go wrong and sometimes it doesn't pick back up. So, but I thrive. And later on, I have like five more, you know, children. And I was holding on to being a mom. I mean a good mom. But at the same time, I lost my house in 2014 because someone got killed outside my house. ((NATS / MUSIC)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) The landlord sold the house and they evicted me. So, when they evicted me, I don't have no money. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Everything was just like falling apart, you know. I couldn’t afford housing. ((NATS: Tracy)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Rise and shine everybody. Meatball. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) After that I lost my children, because CPS [Child Protective Services] said I didn’t have a home for them. They have to stay with my sister. I see them all the time. She has four kids of her own. She's amazing. ((NATS / MUSIC)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I didn't want to like intervene with, you know, their household, whatever, so. And also, you know, I'm with someone. You know, we didn't want to like intrude or anything like that, you know, because they was already set for how many bedrooms they have. So, I didn’t want them to. ((NATS: Tracy)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I’m not wearing those fake eyelashes today. ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I was staying with my mom and she had to move because of the rent increase. For a two bedroom, she was spending like $1600. They wanted it to go up to like $2300. She had to move to a smaller place to which, where only she could only have herself there, you know. I had to become homeless and get a tent and put it here where everybody was at. ((NATS: Tracy showing her tent)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) This is my little bed. And my closet is back here but it’s so messy. You don’t want to see that. And this is where it is. It’s the kitchen, the living room, everything is here. If I have my generator on, then I get to watch TV. I don't believe there's such a thing as being comfortable around here because there is no way to be comfortable here. Now you don't even have a house to protect us. Especially being a woman, being out here in the streets is even worse because you got to protect yourself from being raped. Sometimes I'll be by myself and it's scary. And when I stay with.....I always stay protected. So, this is what goes in my side window, my little, tiny knife. ((NATS: Tracy showing the makeshift bathroom)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) This is a bathroom. This is not the best-looking bathroom, but people just go in the garbage can because the city didn’t bring us bathrooms, so we have to make our own. ((NATS: Tracy showers)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) I have always tried to keep up with my image. At least that's one thing that you got to hold on to. Even though, you know, you're out here, but you don't have to look like you’re out here, you know. By being out here, people already discriminate us or even judge us by the way we are living. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) So, just a little bit of looking proper is a long way to go. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) Being a woman and having to have women necessities and stuff like, you know, we have to up wash all the time. And it's hard out here because we don’t have water. We don't have like things to keep us sanitized and keep us like healthy. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) You know, it's cold and at the same time, you know, like emotion and depression gets worse because we can’t have our children here with us, you know. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) When you have children, you can't bring them out here with you because, you know, CPS [Child Protective Services] will be like that's child endangerment. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) We need to feel like we’re secure, you know. We need to feel like we're human. We need to feel like we’re one of many humans that walk on this earth. We need respect. We need encouragement. ((NATS)) ((Mouangjoi Tracy Saelee, Volunteer, The Village; Unhoused)) A lot of us, homeless people, out here, is very smart, very intelligent, you know. They have career goals, you know. They have things that they want to do but they can't because they don't even have a house to go home and lay their head down and to think about, you know, to be able to wake up in the morning and then get ready to go to work. So, you know, it's not because we're lazy. It’s not because we don't want to. This is the richest country in the world, America. So, why are we homeless? ((Popup Banner: Many Americans live in poverty, amounting to 38.1 million people or 11.8 percent of the U.S. population. In 2018, 6.5 million Americans experienced a severe housing cost burden, which means they spent more than 50 percent of their income on housing. (*National Alliance to End Homelessness) On a single night count in January 2019, more than half a million people in the United States were experiencing homelessness. Nearly 100,000 people were unhoused repeatedly, or for at least a year. (*US Department of Housing and Urban Development))) ((NATS))