The Unpolished Prophet · Housing Justice

A Name on a Form

EPIC | Empath Health held my housing voucher in 2023. I spent three years calling them “the program.” This is what the program did.

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I caught myself doing it again. Chromebook open, voice note running, and right where the organization’s name belonged, I heard my own voice go soft and say “the program.”

For a long time I told myself that was professionalism. Keep it clean. Don’t name names. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Then I played it back and heard what it really was. Protection. I was protecting an organization that has not protected me once in three years.

So I’m going to say it plainly. EPIC | Empath Health, out of the Francis House campus in Tampa, held my housing voucher in 2023. What follows is what they did with it.

Fracture I · The Courtesy I Kept Paying

I understand the version of me who kept the name out. When you’re homeless, every agency is a door you might need to knock on again. You learn to keep your voice low around the people holding the keys. You learn that anger reads as “instability” in a case note, and instability reads as a reason to say no.