Produced by the I Lab at W-B-U-R, Boston.

Welcome to Kind World.

I'm Andrea Aswahay.

And I'm Yasmina Ammer.

So I want to start this week's episode with this government figure.

On any given night in the US, more than half a million people are homeless.

And it's especially a problem in the major cities.

We're talking New York, LA, even here in Boston.

These are places that have some of the most expensive rents in the country. And one city that's seen some of the most expensive rents in the country.

And one city that's seen some of the steepest rent

increases in the country is Seattle.

And that's where this story takes place.

39-year-old Hattie Rhodes and 44-year-old Andrew Constantino remember an awful moment back in 2013 when they looked at their rent increase notice and realized they couldn't afford to stay in their studio apartment.

You know, we basically got priced out of Seattle while we're both working.

We had had the same apartment for nearly a decade.

And I'm thinking, okay, I mean, we'll find something within a month, within two months.

Something always comes up.

We were just shocked that there was nothing affordable and then it became

like this crisis, right? To make matters worse, Hattie had just lost her waitressing job because

the restaurant where she were closed. Her boyfriend Andrew had been and still

works as a community organizer. They bounced around, sometimes living on friends' couches, sometimes in

shelters. They applied for affordable housing,

...