I endorse this assessment of why I linked that Jessica Kent video. tl;dr She focused on convincing an employer to try her out on a job with a sales commission,

I endorse this assessment of why I linked that Jessica Kent video. tl;dr She focused on convincing an employer to try her out on a job with a sales commission, so she could earn money at a multiple of her time, to save as much as she could. She directly invoked sympathy to get the first landlord to take a chance on her. But, she only found someone willing after several months under the somewhat exploitative regime of them insisting she pay for her own background check that - given her history - knew might set them off. The commission-based job is the insight I gleaned from the video that isn't trite ('keep trying'). You might, nonetheless feel some commiseration of someone who had almost nothing. I also acknowledge that there is survivor bias in pointing at her story, when many other ex-convicts had a harder time that did include homelessness or return to prison.