Roommate wanted: Homeless people are pairing up as a way around the housing crisis

Eric Perkins says the kitchen is what sold him on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in Norfolk, Va., that he found through a shared housing program. (Parker Michels-Boyce for NPR)

NORFOLK, Va. — Even after three years of homelessness, Eric Perkins did not want to move into an apartment with another person who had been unhoused.

"I was real skeptical because of the things I was seeing inside the shelter," he says. "A lot of drug use, lot of alcohol abuse, PTSD, there was a lot of veterans there. ... I was like, 'I don't want to be in a house with somebody like that.' "