It’s easy to think stars of RuPaul's Drag Race will leave the show with fame and fortune, but that hasn’t proven true for season three contestant Stacy Layne Matthews.
Matthews — who famously made “henny” happen — has been struggling with housing insecurity for years, but things escalated again recently when she began asking her fans for financial assistance.
She posted a video on Instagram on March 31 explaining that she is “not welcome” at her mother’s house anymore and that she was being forced to leave without a plan for where she would stay.
“I’m just going to go,” Matthews said. “I’m going to grab some stuff and hit it. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what’s going on, but if there is anyone that would love to help me get a room, that would be fabulous.”
Matthews, who won Snatch Game for her impersonation of Mo’Nique and returned for a cameo appearance on All Stars 4, closed the video by saying that if she doesn’t get help, she plans to sleep in her car and told fans to “stay tuned.”
In a post earlier in the week, Matthews explained that she has applied for disability benefits, but while she waits for that to come through, she is selling digital drawings and signed photos. She's also provided her Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal for fans to donate.
“I’m just trying to get my health in order so I can start back working,” she wrote.
In 2024, Matthews was forced to cancel a show in Arizona after being hospitalized with spinal stenosis, which occurs “when the space inside the backbone is too small,” and can “put pressure on the spinal cord and nerves that travel through the spine,” according to the Mayo Clinic. In 2022, she also told fans she was quitting drag performing amidst mental and physical health issues.
Matthews also faced housing insecurity in 2021 when the federal eviction moratorium, which stopped residential evictions during COVID-19, ended and left millions of American renters in the lurch.
“As we all know I been going through some health issues....and not working as much [as] I have in the past,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “I thought I had done enough to stay where I am currently living, by myself in a 1 bedroom apartment, but obviously I haven’t. I been given a week to figure it out or go to court and explain why I'm behind.”
