A Broward County single mother says she spent her first night sleeping in her car this week after an eviction left her with nowhere else to land. Ashley Walker, who has temporarily left her two teenage sons with relatives while she hunts for full-time work, describes the past few months as a losing race against soaring rents and a lost paycheck that ended with her trying to rest in the front seat.
"I don't know where to go," Walker told CBS News. She was evicted from her apartment in February after leaving a dental-assistant job to care for a sick parent, according to the outlet, and has since picked up part-time shifts while applying for more hours wherever she can.
Numbers Behind The Squeeze
Local housing data help explain how one setback can put a family out on the street. The Broward Housing Council reports that roughly 44 percent of renters in the county are cost burdened, meaning they pay 30 percent or more of their income on housing. The Shimberg Center affordability dashboard lists median gross rent in Broward at about $2,106. Put together, those numbers leave many households with almost no cushion when emergencies hit.
Nonprofits Strain To Keep Up
One of the groups trying to catch families before they fall is Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies of Broward County, which previously helped Walker stave off an earlier eviction. Now, staff say the line of people needing help only grows longer. Executive director Dawn Liberta told CBS News that many of the women they serve are "one emergency away" from losing their housing.
The nonprofit reaches roughly 3,000 families each year, according to Local 10, a scale that sounds impressive until you compare it with the volume of need across the county.
Inflation And A Tight Market
Rising prices are making all of this harder to escape. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 4.2 percent year over year jump in the Consumer Price Index in May 2026, with shelter and food among the biggest drivers of higher costs for households, according to BLS. At the same time, county housing studies point to a lingering shortage of affordable rental units, a one-two punch that local leaders say will take both money and policy shifts to fix.
Where Officials And Neighbors Fit In
County officials and housing advocates say they are trying to coordinate a response. The Broward Housing Council advises the County Commission on tools to boost the supply of affordable units and maintains an online affordability dashboard that tracks local conditions. Advocates warn that without more short-term rental assistance and quicker placement into affordable apartments, stories like Walker's will only become more common as summer rolls in.
Walker says quick text messages from her sons - “Mom, I love you” - are what keep her moving from one application and one shift to the next. Local organizations say her situation is less a rare hard-luck story and more a flashing warning sign in a county where so many renters are stretched thin that a single emergency can move a family from paying rent to sleeping in a car or lining up for a shelter bed.
