Kimberly: “You Become Invisible Without a Home”

Homelessness can happen to anyone – literally anyone. Kimberly Forbes is proof.

Forbes, 63, left a long career in estate and business management and co-founded (with her then-husband) a local nonprofit group dedicated to providing safe and sober housing to men and women recovering from drug-and-alcohol addiction. She also is a mother of four grown children who forged a successful career in Napa County, where she had led a stable life for more than 30 years.

She never thought one day she’d be without a home of her own.

But misfortune and poor health struck in tandem. Even worse, she was the victim of a crime and suddenly left without a home.

To her credit, Forbes persisted and endured and, after connecting with Abode Services, she gained and has kept her own housing.

She uses that experience to serve as a member of Abode’s Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB). We recently formed LEAB to hear feedback and perspectives from those who have experienced homelessness, in order to improve the quality of our work.

Forbes’ circuitous life journey took its first major turn when she and her husband divorced. She rented a new home, but soon was beset by major health problems. Just as she was set to have surgery for a serious ailment, she found out her landlord had been lying. He was actually a tenant – not the owner – and was not authorized to rent the place. Immediately, she had to move out and could not retrieve two-months rent and an additional pet deposit she had paid in advance – a loss of thousands of dollars.

“I was the victim of rental fraud and I had only two weeks to move with little money, right before Covid hit,” she said.

She and her service dogs were forced to spend some nights on the street, sleeping in the rain, under some bushes near a park.

“It was frightening,” she said. “I was crying and wondering how this could have happened.”

She found out about the Winter Napa Shelter, where she landed for about two weeks. Abode Services, which runs the shelter, helped Forbes find temporary housing at a local hotel. During this time, the height of the pandemic, she had another successful surgery.

She has since recovered and, eventually, she regained her own housing. She now lives on her own again in Napa.

“I feel a sense of accomplishment,” she said.

Forbes said her relatively brief but harrowing time on the street opened her eyes about the ways homeless individuals become marginalized by society.

“I saw the stigma of being homeless,” she said. “I saw how you become invisible when you’re without a home.”

As a LEAB member, Forbes now wants to use her experience to help others.

“I think that’s one reason why I was chosen to be on this board; I tend to speak up,” she said. “A lot of people don’t realize they know a homeless person. It can happen to anyone.”