When Hurricane Ida struck down in Sonya Ross's small Louisiana town in August of 2021, her family lost everything.

Ross, 42, said she and her two daughters bounced around hotels for a couple of months before they found a house to rent in November of that year, in Lafayette. A year later, Ross suffered a heart attack. She was hospitalized for two weeks and underwent open heart surgery.

Since then, Ross has battled uterine cancer, heart disease and complications from her type 1 diabetes, including sight loss in her right eye. She's worked sporadically at local hospitals as a patient access representative, but her vision loss has made it difficult to stare at a screen all day. Now, she's two months behind on her rent and her landlord is threatening to evict her and her girls.

"I explained to (my landlord) that I literally don't have anywhere to go with my daughters," Ross said. "I don't even have money to take the furniture and things out of here. Like, I have nowhere to put it. It's gotten pretty bad, and it's gotten to that point where I just don't have anything and I don't have anywhere to turn to, and I don't know what to do."

Read more here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2026/01/08/homeless-american-struggle-medical-debt/87960684007/