One man’s journey through homelessness produced the ‘greatest story never told’  ...Middle East

Jeffrey Rawlings stands outside of his office building in downtown Durham. (Photo: Greg Childress/NC Newsline)

When Jeffrey Rawlings became homeless his sophomore year in college, he was too ashamed to tell his family. When it happened again years later, he kept it secret again — even though he was working for a church program that assisted people experiencing homelessness. 

“I kind of jokingly called it the greatest story never told because I had no intention of ever telling it,” Rawlings said. “It became important for other people for me to go ahead and tell [my story].”

Rawlings spent weeks sleeping in his car and couch-surfing, not unlike the people he served in the church program, and that he now serves in his job with the City of Durham, working for HEART (Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams), a program that helps people exiting homelessness find permanent housing. 

The first time Rawlings found himself homeless, he was attending N.C. State University in the mid-1980s. 

“No one knew that I didn’t have a place to live, so I would drop in on Thursday or Friday and hang out with friends,” Rawlings said. “We would do what college students do, drink or whatever, but when it came time to leave, I really didn’t have anywhere to go.”  

As Rawlings explained it, becoming homeless wasn’t difficult. He moved into an apartment with friends his sophomore year after being locked out of the housing lottery. It didn’t work out and he couldn’t afford the rent by himself.

After his roommates left, Rawlings moved into a smaller apartment, but couldn’t afford that one either.

“I got behind on rent and I was getting notices about it, but I didn’t believe that they would actually put me out on the street,” Rawlings said. “They were serious. I came home and there was a star on the door and a padlock.”

He lost everything. By the time his eviction case made it to court, he was already living in his white Buick Skyhawk. He parked in a K-Mart parking lot big enough for him to go unnoticed.

Rawlings spent nearly three months sleeping in his car, sometimes running the engine at night to keep warm. It was the second semester of his sophomore year and the weather had turned cold.

“I had seen something about people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from sleeping in their cars, so I would have the heat on but then I would have the window kind of down, afraid that I would go to sleep and not wake up,” he said.

Rawlings never told his family, not even when he returned home for the summer.

“They sent me off to college with a lot of fanfare and I ended up in my car,” Rawlings said. “I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t bring that shame on them.”

At the time, Rawlings’ grandfather was a prominent Johnston County pastor, and his mother, Tina Fay, worked — and still does — for a nonprofit that provides assistance to low-income residents in their struggle to overcome poverty. Embarrassing them wasn’t an option, he said. 

Fay learned about her son’s experience with homelessness six or seven years ago — more than 30 years after the fact. She and Rawlings are close and he usually shared everything.

“It just broke my heart that he couldn’t bring that to me and understand that no matter what, he’s my child and I would do whatever I could do to help him,” Fay said.

Rawlings only decided to tell his family after he began sharing his experiences publicly. He never doubted that the family would have helped him, which is why he didn’t tell them.

He explained that his mother was a single mom and worked long hours. Fay was still raising two sons and a niece she’d taken in as an infant.

“For me to come back home would have given her another one to have to take care of,” Rawlings said. “I just couldn’t do that to her. She already had her hands full.” 

Homelessness among college students 

College students experiencing homelessness is not as rare as one might think. A National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education study published in 2023 found that 8% percent of undergraduate and 5% of graduate students — 1.5 million students combined — experienced homelessness.

A 2024 study authored by NC State University professor emeritus Mary Haskett bears out Rawlings’ contention that becoming homeless as a college student isn’t difficult. Haskett found that 14% — 5,000 — of the university’s roughly 38,000 students experienced homelessness and 30% experienced food insecurity in 2023. 

“His experience in the 1980s is unfortunately continuing and may be even worse now,” Haskett told NC Newsline. “Minimum wage has not gone up, so we’re stuck at $7.25 an hour with costs skyrocketing. There’s a huge gap between income and what people can actually afford, and that certainly goes for students as well.” 

Haskett co-founded the Raleigh-based nonprofit Housing Options for Students Today (HOST), which places area college students who need temporary housing into homes for up to six months, then helps them find long-term housing.

Alden Hearn, a HOST housing navigator, said rising costs are a major barrier for some students.

“On-campus housing costs approximately $1,000 a month and it can be difficult to find even a room with random roommates for less than that amount,” Hearn said.

The months that universities are closed also present a problem for students struggling with housing, Hearn said.

“It’s complicated because the financial aid award only really takes into account the nine-month academic year,” he said. “Even students that are fully funded, if they’re not receiving support from their family or don’t have another place to stay, then they have this recurring gap in housing during the winter break and then during the summer break.”

Rawlings said he would have gladly taken advantage of such a program had it existed in the mid-1980s.

He turned to what was available at the time, nonprofits in Raleigh that worked with people experiencing homelessness. But pride sometimes got in the way.

At the shelter in Raleigh, Rawlings said, people seeking help had to line up outside and “be on display.”

“People would come out and blow the horn at you and yell out things like, ‘I see you,’ ” Rawlings said. “I couldn’t put my mother through that shame, so I chose to stay in my car.” 

Unhoused a second time 

The second time Rawlings found himself experiencing homelessness, he was working a contract job in Research Triangle Park. The job ended and he found himself without a place to live after a delay in getting another assignment and paycheck from his temp agency.

“This time, it was a lot darker and it lasted longer,”Rawlings said..

Rawlings eventually landed another assignment from the temp agency, but the pay wasn’t as good as the one from the RTP job. He didn’t earn enough money to secure permanent housing, so he stayed in hotels and rooming houses and lived in his car when money was low. 

One of the rooming houses was especially bad, Rawlings remembers. “There was fighting, shootings, prostitutions, drugs, you name it,” Rawlings said. “I had a little small room in the back and I had to walk through all of that to get to it.”

Over a five-year period, Rawlings moved around a lot, from rooming houses to apartments. All together, he was unhoused for about nine months the second time. He doesn’t count the time living in hotels or rooming houses. During those times, he considered himself “precariously housed.”

“The hardest part was that I was spending everything that I had, so I couldn’t save anything,” Rawlings said. “The money I was making was decent, but it wasn’t enough for me to move into a place.”   

It was during his second stretch experiencing homelessness that Rawlings found himself working part-time for his church in a program that aided people experiencing homelessness. He was still working for the temp agency as well.

“I would be helping people get clothes, get food, get attached to medical services, help them get in hotels, doing all of these things, while at the same time sleeping in my car,” Rawling said. “I told my pastor at the end and my pastor got kind of upset.”

The church helped him move into a two-bedroom apartment that he shared with another person. After several more stops at various apartment complexes, Rawlings was finally able to purchase a home in Raleigh in 2024 at age 58.

Rawlings freely shares his story because he believes it’s important that people know that homelessness has many faces.

“It’s not just someone standing on the side of the road holding a sign saying they’re willing to work for food,” Rawlings said. “Homelessness comes in all shapes and sizes, all family compositions and all backgrounds. I came from a good home, a good family with strong Christian values.”

Fay was upset that Rawlings didn’t share his experience with homelessness with her, but said his behavior was consistent with the family’s values.

“It was just one of those things that when you mess up, you clean up,” Fay said. 

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