It was a move of last resort.
Jenni Leocadio vowed not to go couch surfing at her sister's again after getting evicted from her two-story Santa Ana, Calif., apartment in April.
She had done it before, spending two years in a living room with her husband and six children -- including newborn triplets.
In early May, her options ran out. She had nowhere else to go.
Leocadio moved back into a house with her sister's family, sharing one bedroom and a family room with five of her children, ages 6 to 14.
Her husband, Joe Leocadio, 48, said he planned to stay with friends. Their marriage of 19 years is heading for divorce court, the Leocadios said.
"I feel bad for my kids more than anything," said Jenni, 42. "Not only are they losing their home, they're seeing their parents no longer together."
How did college-educated homeowners end up sleeping on sofas and sharing beds in other people's homes?
Each year, courts order an average of 6,400 Orange County families to move out of their homes or have deputies come and remove them, sheriff's figures show. About 52,000 eviction orders are issued annually in Southern California as a whole.
The Leocadios' story is similar to others who fall into a pattern of evictions, leading to a protracted struggle to regain stable housing.
But there are other components in the Leocadio picture as well, including unemployment, workplace disability, mental illness, homelessness and an unexpected expansion of their family.
In the past year, Jenni found herself collecting bottles and cans to recycle, holding yard sales and selling off family possessions to help pay the bills. Joe, a gifted guitarist, had to sell most of his musical instruments.
After months of apartment shopping, they still don't have a home of their own.
"I look every day," Leocadio said. "I drive around certain neighborhoods. But rental costs are so high right now. I can't believe what people are charging for rent."
From homeowners to homeless
The Leocadios could have been rich.
In 2003, they bought a Santa Ana condo for $275,000. Orange County condo prices soared 172 percent over the next three years, with the median condo price coming within an eyelash of $500,000.
But then, after the Leocadios pulled cash out of their home with a balloon-payment loan and escalating mortgage payments, the market crashed. Making matters worse, Joe lost his job as a sales manager for a distribution firm.
"As it was, the payments were ridiculous," Joe said. "When it got to $2,800 (a month), it was either pay the mortgage or feed my brand new baby."
In October 2008, the Leocadios held a short sale, selling the condo for $40,000 less than what they paid and saddling the lender with hundreds of thousands in unpaid debt.
The family was close to broke, "just living on fumes," Joe said. But they found a condo to rent, and soon he found a new job. They rented there for four years.
Then, Joe lost his job again, and the Leocadios stopped paying the rent.
That led to their first eviction in 2011. The Leocadios and their three sons moved "temporarily" into a house with Jenni's sister, brother-in-law and her sister's two children.
Twelve people crowded under one roof would be hard enough. But Jenni also was pregnant.
During a routine sonogram, Joe noticed something odd.
As the sensor passed over his wife's abdomen, he saw two skulls appear on the screen.
"At first, I thought it was a two-headed baby. Your run-of-the-mill, two-headed baby," he joked.
Turns out, there were three heads in Jenni's belly — and three separate bodies. Triplets.
The Leocadio's spent another 1 1/2 years in the living room and adjoining dining room, now with six children, including two girls and a baby boy born prematurely.
Joe felt like they were living under a microscope. He learned to keep his mouth shut when his in-laws complained about how they were raising their kids.
"They were pretty gracious to let us stay there, but it wore us down, to tell you the truth," he said.
Church and his faith in God got them through it, he said. And six months after the triplets were born, Jenni got a job as an underwriter for a loan processing firm.
In August 2014, they moved into a home of their own: An end unit in one of six blue-painted four-plexes with white trim near Bristol Street and Segerstrom Avenue in south Santa Ana. It had two bedrooms and cost them $1,200 a month.
Jenni's garden of potted succulents, plumerias, vegetables and herbs flourished, growing to more than 100 pots stretching from the front, along a side wall to the back alley.
"It sure was better than a living room," Joe said. "We could tell the kids to go to their rooms and hang out. We didn't have to work around other people's schedules."
Lightning strikes twice
But their run of bad luck returned.
With Joe staying at home and taking care of the kids, Jenni was the breadwinner. Until an injury from handling too many loan files put her on disability.
The family lived off $850 per month in food stamps and $1,054 per month from CalWorks, a public assistance program that provides cash aid to unemployed or disabled parents with children.
"Jenni took it upon herself to do whatever to make ends meet, whether it was collecting cans for recycling or doing yard sales," Joe said. "Basically, the money just ran out."
So did the love.
Joe, the couple learned, suffered from bipolar disorder. Last summer, he started getting treatment, but even with medication, the Leocadios weren't getting along.
"The bipolar disorder put a huge strain on my marriage," he said. "She'd already been fed up with the mood swings. She felt she had to get out."
Jenni started living in her gray, 2005 Honda Odyssey mini-van.
Jenni hadn't realized that Joe stopped paying the rent in December. After missing a second payment in January, the landlord posted a three-day notice to pay the rent or move out, then filed for eviction at the end of January. When Joe failed to respond, the court issued an eviction order without a hearing. The family had to move out by April 3.
Endless packing
By the end of March, the walkway leading to the Leocadio front door was lined with boxes, chairs, lamps and a chest of drawers.
Out back, the 9-by-14-foot patio was packed solid to the top of a 6-foot fence with hoarded possessions — outdoor toys, gardening equipment, shelves, a rock collection, bicycle tires and equipment.
She got a $25 move-in special at Public Storage, with the rent set to rise to $204 a month.
She rented a U-Haul truck, and with help from friends, drove load after load to a storage unit in Santa Ana. It didn't all fit, and she rented a second storage unit, bringing combined storage fees to $384 a month.
She left behind a refrigerator, beds, plus the 750 cubic feet of stuff on the back patio.
"I've had a few anxiety attacks. I'm having a hard time not being depressed," Jenni said. "But I have to do it for my kids."
For a month, Jenni lived in her van while her kids stayed either in a motel or with relatives with their father. Out of pride, she kept looking for a new apartment but couldn't find anything she could afford. So back to her sister's she and her kids went.
Her family of six now has one bed, two dressers and a dollhouse for her two daughters.
At night, her two older sons sleep on a sofa in her sister's family room. Her triplets share a queen-sized bed, while she sleeps crossways at the foot of the bed.
She has no idea how much longer she'll be living at her sister's. But for now, it's preferable to being on the street.
"It's more comfortable than (sleeping) in the van — sometimes," she said. "In the van, I didn't have six feet shoved in my back."
