Three women, all working full-time in their hometown. One’s sleeping in her car. One’s on her brother’s couch. One’s three weeks from eviction. This is the housing affordability crisis in Prineville, Oregon—raw, unfiltered, and happening right now.

The Grocery Store Aisle Confessionals

Overheard at Ray’s Food Place, Prineville, Oregon

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📍 Ray’s Food Place, 3rd Street
Prineville, OR 97754
🕐 6:47 PM, Thursday, January 15th
🌡️ 38°F, high desert wind pushing tumbleweeds across the Safeway parking lot

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BEFORE WE START:

Hey. Yeah, you. I need to ask you something personal real quick.

Where’d you sleep last night?

No, seriously. Your own place? Parents’ house? Friend’s couch? Back seat of your car behind the old Les Schwab?

Hold that answer. We’re going inside Ray’s together. Right now. Because there’s something happening in Aisle 4 you need to hear, and I need you to tell me if I’m crazy for thinking this town’s eating its own.

You ready?

Let’s go.

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VIGNETTE 1: AISLE 4 (PASTA & CANNED GOODS)

6:47 PM

Your cart’s got the basics. Off-brand spaghetti. Store brand sauce. Frozen broccoli you’ll probably forget to eat. You’re counting in your head—$18, maybe $19 if you grab the bread. Bank account’s at $52.14. Payday’s Monday. Your car’s parked in the back row because the fuel light’s been on since Tuesday and you’re stretching the last gallon and a half.

The fluorescent light above Aisle 4’s been flickering since October. Nobody’s fixed it. Probably never will.

Two women are stopped near the Prego. Early twenties. One’s in a Ray’s apron—MACKENZIE, name tag crooked, off-clock but grabbing stuff anyway. The other’s BREE—Carhartt coveralls, hair in a bun that gave up at noon, holding rotini like she forgot what she came for.

BREE (voice tight): “—first, last, deposit. Steve wants it by the 20th. That’s four thousand three hundred dollars, Kenz.”

MACKENZIE: “For that shithole duplex on Elm? The one where the porch is literally separating from the house?”

BREE: “Yep. Was twelve hundred two years ago. Now it’s fifteen hundred plus electric, and PGE’s jacked the rates because of the wildfire mitigation or whatever—”

She sees you. Stops mid-sentence. You’re standing there with store-brand sauce.

BREE (direct, to YOU): “Sorry—hey—do you live in town?”

Your stomach drops. You nod.

BREE: “You rent or own?”

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

Think about it. Because whatever comes out of your mouth next, she’s gonna know. People out here can smell the truth. High desert doesn’t hide much.

YOU: “I… I’m between places right now.”

The air changes. Mackenzie and Bree look at each other. That look. The one that says oh, she’s one of us.

MACKENZIE (softer now): “Where you staying?”

YOU: “My car. Behind the old JC Penney building mostly. Sometimes the Pilot truck stop if it’s too cold.”

You didn’t plan to say it. But there it is. Out loud. In Ray’s Food Place. Aisle 4. Under a flickering light that’ll never get fixed.

BREE: “Jesus. How long?”

YOU: “Month. Maybe five weeks.”

MACKENZIE: “You working?”

YOU: “Yeah. Medical supply place on 26. Thirty-seven hours a week. They won’t make me full-time.”

BREE (says it quiet, like a prayer): “Benefits dodge.”

YOU: “Yeah.”

Nobody speaks for a second. Hank Williams Jr.’s playing over the speakers. Some kid’s screaming in cereal. The coolers are humming. Normal sounds. But everything feels different now because you said it out loud.

MACKENZIE: “I’m about three weeks from the same situation. My landlord—you know Steve Kowalski?”

YOU: “Softball coach?”

MACKENZIE: “That’s him. Raised my rent four hundred dollars. Texted me. Didn’t even call. ‘Market rates, Kenzie, nothing personal.'” her voice cracks just slightly “I’ve been there four years. Never late. Not once.”

BREE (to you, direct): “You showering?”

YOU: “Rec center. Five bucks.”

BREE: “Food?”

YOU (look at your cart): “This. Peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes I pick up a shift meal at work if they’re throwing it out anyway.”

MACKENZIE: “Fuck.”

BREE: “How old are you?”

YOU: “Twenty-seven.”

BREE: “I’m twenty-seven. She’s twenty-six.” gestures to Mackenzie “We both grew up here. We both work. We’re both about to be homeless in the town we’re from.”

MACKENZIE (looks at you): “What do you make? If you don’t mind me asking.”

YOU: “Seventeen-fifty an hour.”

MACKENZIE: “I make sixteen-eighty. Just got my ‘annual raise.’ Forty cents.” bitter laugh “Woohoo.”

BREE: “I’m at the clinic. Eighteen-twenty. Full time. I ran the math last week—”

She pulls out her phone. Shows you. Notes app. Numbers everywhere.

BREE: “—after taxes, I take home about twenty-three hundred a month. Cheapest studio I can find is eleven-seventy-five. That’s half my pay gone. Then there’s electric, maybe eighty. Internet, sixty. Phone, fifty. Car insurance—mandatory—hundred and ten. Gas to get to work, probably hundred-twenty. That’s sixteen-ninety-five before I eat a single meal or buy shampoo or pay my doctor bill from when I had bronchitis in November.”

She’s shaking. Phone screen lit up with all those numbers. Budget spreadsheet of someone doing everything right and still drowning.

BREE: “I’m sleeping on my brother Cody’s couch. Has been since July. He’s got twin four-year-olds and his wife Shauna keeps making these comments—never direct, just ‘must be nice not having bills’ or ‘some of us work AND have kids’—and I’m there at 11 PM trying to be invisible on their fucking sectional wondering what I did wrong.”

YOU: “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

BREE (looks at you): “Then why does it feel like I failed?”

You don’t have an answer. Because you’ve asked yourself the same question every night parked behind JC Penney.

An older guy—rancher type, Wranglers, boots with actual manure on them—pushes his cart past. Doesn’t look up. Doesn’t acknowledge. The economy of acknowledgment out here: you see everything, you say nothing.

MACKENZIE: “My dad keeps saying ‘move to Bend, there’s more opportunity.’ Dad. BEND? I’d need four roommates to afford a closet. And I’ve got a job HERE. Had it six years. But six years doesn’t mean shit when someone from Portland with a remote tech job can offer six months rent up front for that studio above Lonny’s feed store.”

YOU: “The one Carly was in?”

MACKENZIE: “You heard?”

YOU: “Everyone heard.”

BREE: “Girl works for Facebook. Offered thirty-six hundred dollars cash. Same day the listing went up. Carly didn’t stand a chance.”

MACKENZIE (to you): “Where you from originally?”

YOU: “Here. Born at Pioneer Memorial. Graduated Crook County High, ’16.”

BREE: “So you’re watching your own hometown squeeze you out.”

YOU: “Yeah.”

MACKENZIE: “Us too.”

The three of you stand there. Three women. Born here, raised here, working here. Can’t afford here.

BREE: “I applied for that new complex out by the data center. Juniper Ridge? The ‘affordable housing’ one everyone was so excited about?”

MACKENZIE: “And?”

BREE: “Income qualified. Credit score qualified. Application approved. You know what the rent is?”

YOU: “How much?”

BREE: “Thirteen-fifty for a one-bedroom. ‘Affordable.'” she laughs, sounds like breaking glass “Thirteen-fifty’s affordable now. That’s the benchmark. We’re so fucked we’ve redefined the language.”

MACKENZIE: “Did you take it?”

BREE: “Couldn’t. First, last, deposit, pet deposit even though I don’t have a pet, application fee, admin fee, insurance policy they require—all in it was four grand. I’ve got eight hundred dollars saved. That’s it. That’s eight months of saving everything I could.”

YOU: “I’ve got two-twenty.”

MACKENZIE: “I’ve got negative thirty-seven. Overdrafted Tuesday buying gas.”

The math is everywhere. Invisible weight you all carry. Numbers that don’t work no matter how you arrange them.

BREE (quieter): “Sometimes I think about leaving. Like, entirely. Just driving east till rent’s cheap. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming.”

MACKENZIE: “And work where? Doing what?”

BREE: “I don’t know. That’s the whole fucking problem.”

YOU: “I looked at Madras.”

MACKENZIE: “It’s the same there now.”

YOU: “I know. I just thought—”

BREE: “You thought maybe you were missing something. Maybe there was some place, some option, some solution you hadn’t found yet.”

YOU: “Yeah.”

BREE: “There’s not.”

Silence. Real silence. The kind where three people hold the same invisible weight and there’s nothing left to say about it.

Someone’s cart squeaks past. The kid in cereal finally stopped screaming. Hank Williams Jr. fades out, something by George Strait fades in.

MACKENZIE (clears throat): “I gotta grab milk before my shift. Punching in at seven.”

BREE: “How many hours this week?”

MACKENZIE: “Forty-four. Picked up swing shifts. Trying to save for—” stops “—I don’t even know anymore. Saving for what? A deposit I can’t afford on a place that’ll raise rent in six months anyway?”

She walks toward dairy. Bree looks at the rotini in her hand.

BREE (to you): “Spaghetti. Fourth time this week. It’s cheap.”

YOU: “Same.”

BREE: “You doing okay? Like, really?”

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

YOU: “No. Not really. But I’m still here.”

BREE: “Yeah. Me too.”

She walks toward checkout. You’re alone in Aisle 4. Flickering light. Cart with eighteen dollars of groceries. Phone in your pocket with $52.14 in the bank and a fuel light that’s been on since Tuesday.

You grab the sauce. Blue box pasta. Keep moving.

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VIGNETTE 2: THE PARKING LOT

7:03 PM

You load your two bags into your ’09 Subaru. Back seat’s your bedroom—sleeping bag, pillow, duffel with clothes, gallon water jug, travel toothbrush. Front seat’s your kitchen—crackers, peanut butter, plastic utensils. Trunk’s your closet.

A truck pulls up next to you. Dodge Ram, circa 2005, ranch rig with hay bales in the bed. Guy gets out—late sixties, weathered face, Resistol hat. FRANK. You’ve seen him around. Everyone’s seen Frank. He runs cattle out past Powell Butte.

He sees your setup. Sees the sleeping bag. You watch him clock it. He doesn’t say anything. Just nods.

FRANK: “You the one staying out behind JC Penney?”

Your face goes hot. “Sometimes.”

FRANK: “Thought so. Hector at the tire shop mentioned it.” pause “You got people in town?”

YOU: “My mom’s in Portland. Dad passed three years ago.”

FRANK: “What was his name?”

YOU: “Jerry. Jerry Hastings.”

FRANK (face changes): “Jerry Hastings worked the mill.”

YOU: “Yeah.”

FRANK: “Good man. Helped me move cattle through town during the Fourth of July parade, must’ve been 2010. Didn’t have to.”

YOU: “That sounds like him.”

Frank’s quiet for a second. Looks at the mountains. Sun’s almost down, turning everything orange and purple. Ochoco ridgeline sharp against the sky.

FRANK: “Your dad bought his house in ’94 for eighty-two thousand dollars. Three bedroom. Quarter acre. I know because I almost bought it instead, went with the property out Powell Butte. You know what that house sold for last year?”

YOU: “No.”

FRANK: “Three-ninety-five. Same house. Nothing changed except the number. And the mill’s gone. Wages’ve been flat since 2008. So tell me—” looks at you direct “—who’s that house for now?”

YOU: “Not for us.”

FRANK: “No. Not for you.”

He reaches into his truck. Pulls out a business card. Hands it to you.

FRANK: “My foreman’s daughter runs a room rental situation. House on Fifth Street. She’s fair. Charges what things actually cost, not what the market’ll bear. Tell her Frank sent you. Maybe she’s got something.”

YOU: “I can’t afford—”

FRANK: “Tell her anyway. Sometimes there’s ways.”

He gets back in his truck. Starts to drive off, then stops. Window down.

FRANK: “Your dad was one of the good ones. He’d be pissed about what’s happening to this town. I’m pissed about it too. Doesn’t fix anything, but you should know.”

He drives off. Taillights disappearing toward the highway.

You look at the card: GLORIA MARTINEZ – ROOMS AVAILABLE – (541) 555-0147

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VIGNETTE 3: PILOT TRUCK STOP BATHROOM

10:38 PM

Too cold to sleep in the car tonight. Twenty-six degrees. Your breath fogs inside the Subaru even with the sleeping bag. You drove to Pilot, idling in the lot, watching the fuel gauge drop.

Inside the fluorescents are brutal. Trucker bathroom—industrial soap, broken hand dryer, graffiti on the stall: Amanda owes me $40 and Jesus Saves and For a good time call your mom she misses you.

You’re at the sink. Washing your face. Brushing your teeth. You paid for a large coffee you won’t drink just to justify being here.

The door opens. MACKENZIE. Still in her Ray’s apron. She freezes when she sees you.

MACKENZIE: “Oh. Hey.”

YOU: “Hey.”

She knows. You know she knows. She’s off at 11, probably stopped for gas.

MACKENZIE: “It’s cold tonight.”

YOU: “Yeah.”

She goes to the sink next to you. Washes her hands. Neither of you talks for a second. The fluorescent light hums.

MACKENZIE: “You gonna call that number? Gloria’s?”

YOU: “How’d you—”

MACKENZIE: “Frank’s told about ten people in the last two years. That’s how it works out here. Information travels. Sometimes it helps.”

YOU: “You call her?”

MACKENZIE: “I did. She’s full. Waitlist is seven people deep.”

YOU: “Shit.”

MACKENZIE: “Yeah.”

She’s not looking at you. Looking at the mirror. Both of you are. Two women, twenty-six and twenty-seven. Working. Trying. Teeth brushed in a truck stop bathroom at 10:38 PM because neither of you has a sink you can call your own.

MACKENZIE: “You know what the fucked up part is?”

YOU: “What?”

MACKENZIE: “I’m not even surprised anymore. Like, this—” gestures around the bathroom “—this feels normal now. You know? Sleeping in cars, couch surfing, bathroom sinks, counting change. It’s just… Tuesday.”

YOU: “I know.”

MACKENZIE: “We shouldn’t have to know.”

YOU: “No.”

She dries her hands on her jeans because the hand dryer’s broken. Turns to go. Stops.

MACKENZIE: “If you need anything—coffee, shower at my place before I move out, whatever—I’m in the book. Mackenzie Thornton.”

YOU: “Thanks.”

MACKENZIE: “We gotta look out for each other. Nobody else is gonna.”

She leaves. Door swings shut. You’re alone again.

You stare at yourself in the mirror. Twenty-seven. High school diploma. Job. Car that runs. Following the rules. Playing the game.

Still here. Still fighting. Still losing.

You dry your face with rough paper towels and head back to your car.

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EPILOGUE: BACK SEAT, 11:16 PM

You’re in the sleeping bag. Engine off. Watching your breath fog. Pilot parking lot glows orange under sodium lights. Semis idling. Hum of refrigeration units. Distant sound of Highway 26.

Your phone buzzes. Text from a number you don’t know:

“this is bree from rays. mack gave me your number hope thats ok. shauna kicked me out tonight. im at pilot too. blue honda civic. if you see me.”

You look around the parking lot. There. Three rows over. Blue Civic. Bree’s in the front seat.

You text back: “i see you. you ok?”

“no. but im here. thats something right”

“yeah. thats something.”

“this is fucked”

“yeah”

“im tired”

“me too”

“ok. just wanted to say hi i guess. goodnight”

“goodnight bree”

You put your phone down. Look at Gloria’s card on your dashboard. Look at Bree’s Civic three rows over. Look at the mountains you can’t see but you know are there because you grew up here and you know this place like you know your own heartbeat.

This is Prineville, Oregon.

January 15th, 2026.

And you’re twenty-seven years old, sleeping in your car, in the town you’re from, working thirty-seven hours a week, doing everything right.

And it still isn’t enough.

Tomorrow you’ll wake up. You’ll wash your face at Pilot. You’ll go to work. You’ll smile when they ask how you are. You’ll say “fine.” You’ll count every dollar. You’ll make it to Monday’s paycheck.

You’ll survive.

Because that’s what you do.

But tonight, right now, in this back seat, with Bree three rows over and Mackenzie somewhere across town packing boxes, with Frank’s words still in your head and the mountains invisible in the dark—

Tonight you let yourself feel it.

All of it.

The unfairness. The exhaustion. The anger. The fear. The loneliness. The math that doesn’t work. The system that broke. The hometown that doesn’t want you anymore even though you never left.

You let yourself feel it.

And then you close your eyes.

And you sleep.

Because tomorrow’s coming whether you’re ready or not.

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— The Seasoned Sage

I’ve been Frank. I’ve been the woman in the Ray’s bathroom. I’ve been Donna at the register watching three generations get priced out of the only home they’ve ever known. I’ve been you, reading this, wondering if it’s supposed to feel this hard.

It’s not. It’s broken. And I don’t have Gloria’s number for you because Gloria’s waitlist is seven people deep and growing. I don’t have a solution. Neither does Mackenzie. Neither does Bree.

But I’ll tell you what I do have: I’ve seen you. Out here in the high desert, in the flickering light of Aisle 4, in the Pilot bathroom at 10:38 PM, in your car with your sleeping bag and your $52.14 and your dignity still intact.

I’ve seen you.

And you didn’t fail.

The numbers failed. The system failed. The people who decided housing is an investment instead of a right—they failed.

You’re still here. That’s the home run.

Even if here is a back seat.