Welcome to Rumble Strip, Vermont. I'm Erica Heilman.

In my job as a private investigator, I've learned that a lot of people move a lot.

I guess I always figured that most people were like me and grew up in one or two towns

maybe and now have a reasonably secure address where their mail is delivered. But there

are a lot of people who are hard to find because they're living

in motels, cars, sleeping on a cousin's couch.

There are multiple families living in rotation in an apartment, people living in tents, in campers until it gets too cold, then

they have to think of another plan.

And this world of transients is invisible to most people who are not inside it.

It runs parallel to the world of stable addresses.

We've all seen panhandlers on the street,

and we assume these folks are homeless,

and maybe they are.

But most people who are homeless you don't see,

and some people who are homeless wouldn't even use that word to describe

themselves or their lives. Kevin De Mars estimates he's been homeless 10 times in his 58 years.

I met with him in his apartment in Rutland, Vermont,

and we talked about why he's been homeless so many times and what it was

like to live in the woods. It's a difficult and raw conversation at times, and Kevin struggles

with some mental health issues that he's been working through in

counseling for years. But he talks very clearly about what it's like to be someone

who can't always live comfortably in the world of people. Welcome.

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