So, the day after my birthday (September 29th) I'm finding out that my roomie may not have the money to cover rent.
Neither of our friends or family can help us out and we're already selling stuff on OfferUp and Craigslist with no hits.
My roommate does have an upper hand though since she has a very good friend or two who will let her stay with them. Meanwhile, I'll be on the street. No friends or family can help me either especially since they're all on the other side of the country.
Work has been really bad and my social security disability is taking forever.
Any advice would be appreciated. I really do not want to end up in a shelter.
Understand your leverage and negotiate. It isn't like the second you miss rent you're out on the street. Eviction takes time and has multiple off ramps.
First they have to file for eviction. This will lead to a hearing, which usually takes a month. If at any point in that month you get paid up or sign an agreement such as an installment plan to pay things off, the eviction will be overturned. If not, you will have around a week in most places, sometimes you can apply for extensions and drag it out a bit. So in general expect about six weeks.
Your landlord probably doesn't want to go through all this because it's all lost revenue for him. And turning over the apartment is more lost revenue. So if you haven't had any issues before he's probably going to be pretty motivated to negotiate. You can generally work out an installment plan or something, just get in front of it.
If that's just impossible because of lost income, my advice is still to stretch it out as long as you can, and save as much as you can in the meantime.
If the worst happens, there are other options besides shelters. Some people stay in storage units, which have the added benefit of housing your shit. Obviously some places are strict about this but if you scope out enough of them you will see the ones where people stay at.
Squatting is an option, but good squats are hard to find and you usually have to know someone. But some squats are actually pretty nice, like people assume it's all sleeping it gutted houses with no electric but that isn't necessarily the case. But you still end up staying with a lot of sketchy people. And even if there isn't an landlord, they may expect you to throw in a certain amount. But squatting got me through some hard, lean times and got me back on my feet, so I'm speaking from experience.