SLO County couple has lived in a hotel for 9 months. Now they face a ‘dire emergency’
Editor’s note: This story is one in a series on the struggles people face finding housing in San Luis Obispo County.
A local couple and their three cats have made a 300-square-foot hotel room in Atascadero their home for nearly nine months as they search for new housing.
They have a lead on a new home, but it’s not as imminent as they’d like, and money is running short.
Struggles like theirs to find affordable housing on the Central Coast have become an increasingly common story as rents and home prices continue to rise locally.
During their stay in Atascadero, activist Tobey Crockett and author Mark Onspaugh have faced financial hardship, health problems, the COVID-19 pandemic and copious amounts of stress.
“Every morning I’m waking up with acid in my stomach, fearful that any moment we might be out on the street, living out of a car or something,” Onspaugh said. “Had it not been for our friends and family. I don’t know where we would have ended up.”
How a short hotel stay turned into 9 months
Onspaugh and his wife were living in a rental house in Morro Bay in June 2021 when their landlords notified them that they would no longer be able to stay there because the property was being listed for sale.
Given six months to find a new place to live, Crockett and Onspaugh waited a month to start their housing search as they celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary and Crockett recovered from some health issues. Crockett has diverticulitis, a condition that affects the digestive tract.
“We thought that we would find something — piece of cake — in six months, no problem!” Crockett said with a laugh.
They began applying for new places to live in July 2021, but as Crockett continued to experience health issues, the couple began to see themselves being priced out of more and more locations.
Finally, the lease ended and they moved into Home2 Suites by Hilton in Atascadero.
Everything the couple owns they kept in their hotel room and a nearby storage unit.
Crockett and Onspaugh’s income has been inconsistent during their stay at the hotel.
Onspaugh, who worked at Home Depot part-time before he retired a couple years ago, said the company’s lack of health care for its part-time workers hurt the couple as Crockett’s health began to worsen.
Onspaugh said the couple worked to “cobble together enough income to pay for insurance” as they transitioned to hotel living, consisting largely of Onspaugh’s Social Security benefits and funding from friends and family.
Onspaugh also receives benefits from the state for being Crockett’s caretaker due to her medical problems, while Crockett said she’s applying for long-term disability benefits.
“The insurance that we have medically saved Tobey’s life and helped keep us off the street,” Onspaugh said. “When you’re talking about a five-, six-hour surgery at UCLA, I can’t even fathom what the cost of that would be to me if we had to pay all that.”
Crockett said that her health issues have hurt her and her husband’s ability to find housing and made living in the hotel personally challenging. Chronic pain is part of her condition, and in an environment designed for shorter stays, finding comfort is difficult.
“The chairs are wrong. The desk is wrong. The couch is wrong. The bed is wrong,” Crockett said. “There is no bathtub, (so) I can’t soak those muscles.”
Further, without a kitchen, maintaining Crockett’s limited diet has been more difficult than ever.
“All my (health) problems have to do with eating,” Crockett said. “If I actually had a stovetop and oven, I could make food for myself that I would be able to eat. I’m a very good cook, but in this situation we’re stuck with a toaster oven and a microwave.”
Lack of available housing extends search
Prior to their stay at the hotel, Onspaugh said the couple exhausted their options for finding housing in the area.
The couple searched Craigslist for rental properties in their price range, but Crockett said some of the places they found did not accept pets, meaning the couple’s three cats would have to go to a shelter.
“We promised these animals forever homes,” Crocker said, and having to give up the cats “I think would have actually broken us. We haven’t reached the breaking point.”
The hotel allows animals, so they decided to live there until a more stable housing situation became available.
Crockett said the couple’s lack of financial stability prevented some larger rental companies from accepting their applications for places in their price range.
Crockett said she doesn’t blame the rental companies for denying her and her husband housing.
“Ultimately, what I see is that they are as humans also being squeezed in their situation,” Crockett said. “They have to do things they don’t necessarily want to do as (rental) agents.”
Help from friends, family keep couple afloat
Over the past nine months, Onspaugh said keeping themselves mentally healthy while “essentially homeless and dependent” has been a challenge.
“I’m a very proud person,” Onspaugh said. “It’s very hard for me to ask for help because I feel like I should have made better decisions. — I should have gotten a 9-to-5 job and kept it, but I wanted to be a writer — and then you start second-guessing yourself.”
Crockett said the hotel’s staff has been “unfailingly warm and wonderful” during the couple’s stay.
During their time between homes, the couple has relied on the help of friends, family and community organizations such as churches, who kept them from living on the street or in their car.
“There has been so much generosity of spirit, (people) just trying to give us the extra mile, help us if they could, listen to us, give us a hug — anything that they could do. It’s really been amazing,” Crockett said. “My faith in people is just huge.”
New home in Paso Robles presents fresh challenges
After months of searching, Crockett and Onspaugh have found a new place in Paso Robles to call home.
However, they won’t be able to move into the house until windows shattered by a previous tenant are replaced.
Crockett said ongoing supply chain issues have delayed the delivery of the replacement windows until October or November, which means they’ll need to stay at the hotel longer.
By the time they’ll be ready to leave Homes2 Suites by Hilton, they’ll have stayed there a full year.
“That is our now dire emergency,” Crockett said. “We don’t know how we’re going to deal with this full three- to four-month gap. I don’t feel that we can continue to ask our friends for help. It looks like (it will cost) another $20,000 (to keep living at the hotel) and they’ve already been so kind.”
Crockett started a GoFundMe fundraiser in March to help cover the couple’s housing costs. As of Tuesday, the fundraising campaign had raised $27,402 toward a $60,000 goal.
Crockett said she’s also open to other fundraising solutions, though she doesn’t have a complete plan yet.
“We are open to a beautiful, miraculous solution, and we need to find one because we are almost there,” Crockett said, comparing the couple’s struggles to the Greek myth of Tantalus, who was forced to stand just out of reach of food and water. “We are almost there, but not quite able to make the leap.”
Do you have a story to share about the struggle to find or keep housing in San Luis Obispo County? Contact housing reporter John Lynch at jlynch@thetribunenews.com.
This story was originally published August 10, 2022 at 10:00 AM.
