Jai Montag

The Cost of Survival is a powerful hybrid of research, memoir, and poetry that explores what it means to live unhoused as a queer person in small city America. Blending lived experience with broader social realities, Jai Montag offers an unflinching yet deeply human look at homelessness-one that moves beyond statistics to reveal the daily calculations, identity-based risks, and quiet resilience of survival.
This is not just a story of hardship. It is a call for dignity, safety, and change.