Tyler Perry Reflects on 'Blessing' of Eviction from 'First Apartment After Being Homeless': 'I Would Have Never Left'

Mar. 15, 2025

Tyler Perry in Hollywood, California, on Oct. 26, 2022.Photo:Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

ForTyler Perry, hindsight is 20/20.

The actor and filmmaker recently recounted an experience from his younger years in atouching Instagram post, revealing that he visited his “first apartment after being homeless” a decade ago, when he heard the building was going to be demolished (though it’s still up today).

Sharing photos from his visit and the apartment itself interspersed with slides of text, Perry, 54, recalled how he “was so happy to have” the apartment but simultaneously felt “anxious and scared that I wasn’t going to be able to pay the $425 rent every month.”

When the landlord would knock on his door to collect the rent, “I would just freeze and pray that he went away,” theMadeastar wrote. “I was late on the rent every month. Man, this makes me tear up.”

Perry said he “had a job at UPS collections and was so depressed,” as “nothing was working” in terms of “trying to get my plays off the ground.” And when he finally got enough money from doing a play, he “was so happy” that he was able to backpay his rent, which he did right away.

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Tyler Perry’s Instagram post about his old apartment.Tyler Perry/Instagram

Tyler Perry/Instagram

But after he came back from doing the play one weekend, “the landlord had an eviction on my door,” Perry wrote. “This is after I paid him. I was so mad. He said I had been late too many times and I had been there too long and it was time for me to go.”

Despite feeling “angry” at the time over being “forced to leave” the one space “that I had found comfort in,” Perry went on to say he eventually saw a parallel between his unit number and the start of something new in his life.

“8 in biblical terms means a new beginning,” he wrote over the topof a photo of himselfstanding in front of his old apartment door. “I now know that I was at my new beginning. I now know that if he had let me stay there I would have never left, because I had gotten comfortable.”

“I now know, and I thank God that that man put me out of that place,” he continued. “I can hear his voice, ‘You have to go, you’ve been here too long.’ "

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Perry said that “Looking back it’s easy to see the blessing in” his experience, though “going through it feels like you’re at the end” in the moment.

“But I choose to believe that you are at a new beginning. Don’t be afraid!” he concluded.

Musician and business ownerChris “Classic " Davisthanked Perry for sharing his story and went one step further, proposing taking it to a wider audience.

“Apt 8 is the best series I havent seen yet, where the landlord is ‘God’ who helps people who need a place but evicts them when they have the ability to move on,” he wrote. “They all go on to do great things and all comeback to visit Apt 8 when they hear its being torn down … and when they all meet each other they find out that the Landlord — no one outside of those apts can verify he exists🙏🏽.”

source: people.com