The Bloomington Herald-Times, an Indiana-based newspaper, laid off its senior executive editor and evicted him out of his apartment, which was owned by the paper, and he is now homeless.
Rich Jackson learned of his termination at the paper last week, according to Indiana Public Media. In addition to losing his job, the Bloomington Herald-Times also gave him until noon on Friday to vacate the apartment, which was in the paper’s office building.
Jackson, who had worked at the paper for 10 months, created a blog to document his experience since losing his job, and he claims he’s currently homeless.
“I’ve struggled with finances because of divorce and bankruptcy, termination, and a previous layoff,” he wrote Wednesday, before explaining that his bosses at the paper had “set me up in [an] apartment at the newspaper, once meant for the company owner” so he could “save some money.”
“So, I have saved a little money after many struggles decades in the making,” Jackson added. “But I need to make those saving[s] last as long as possible as a 54-year-old man seeks a new job in what the Federal Reserve calls the worst economy in American history. That’s when I decided to blog this story. For years, I have written or edited hundreds of stories about homelessness. And here I am.”
In a more recent post published on Friday, Jackson recounted how he checked into a Motel 6 for three nights, costing him $46 a night.
“It smelled clean, and looked it,” he described. “No mini fridge, no microwave. Hell, no Kleenex — or even the sandpaper version you find in most hotels. That’s fine.”
