Amy Schumer Opens Up About ‘Traumatizing’ Experience With Homelessness as a Child—Revealing Her Family Had To ‘Live in Basements’ After Losing Mansion to Bankruptcy

Comedian Amy Schumer has candidly laid bare her harrowing childhood experience with homelessness after her family went bankrupt when her father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The 43-year-old “Trainwreck” star lifted the lid on her rocky upbringing in a wide-ranging interview with “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper.

The Manhattan-born Hollywood heavyweight revealed that her rise to fame wasn’t easy, explaining that she suffered from a great deal of “trauma” from an early age.

She explained to Cooper that, during her earliest years, her dad, Gordon, and her mother, Sandra, were able to give their children a very privileged lifestyle courtesy of the wealth that came from her father’s successful baby furniture company.

When she was a young girl, Amy—who has a younger sister, Kim—and her family lived in a Long Island “mansion” that boasted its own pool and was the epitome of a luxury home.

“We had money, we were comfortable,” she said of her early ears.

However, by the time she hit age 9, Amy’s life turned upside down and became a “nightmare” when father was diagnosed with MS, which triggered a series of very difficult hurdles for the family to deal with.

Soon after Gordon’s diagnosis, the family went bankrupt—and not long after, lost their home as a result of their financial struggles, which also led to the end of her parents’ marriage.

“Then we were poor and my parents got divorced and my mom started dating my friend’s dad, which was a nightmare,” Amy recalled.

She explained that it felt as though her life had transformed “overnight,” admitting that even school became a difficult place for her because of the hurt she was experiencing.

“It was overnight. We went from living in what I would consider a mansion to a tiny two-bedroom home,” she shared.

“I was really traumatized and didn’t think I was traumatized. It was really hard but I still had a boyfriend, I was still making jokes, going out and I was popular; but it was hard to go from being comfortable to then all of a sudden your parents go bankrupt,” she added.

Over the next several years, Amy’s mom struggled to find a place for her family to call home and “moved every year.”

“We moved every year and we would live in someone’s basement or someone’s attic, that kind of stuff,” she said.

Despite not having a permanent home, Amy noted that she always had a roof over her head—adding that her mother did everything in her power to ensure that they were always clothed and had food.

What’s more, while she wasn’t always dressed in the most up-to-date fashions and didn’t have a flashy car to drive around in, she said that those material things didn’t make too serious an impression because none of her friends had any money, either.

“I always had somewhere to live, we always had food, I was never embarrassed of my outfit and because also my friends didn’t have any money, which was nice, none of us were dressed well, none of us had a nice car, so there was no class distinction or anything,” the comedian explained.

Although she insisted that she never felt the “loss of money,” the A-lister admitted that her mother once told her that she would always ask her bus driver to drop her off away from the place their family was residing in because she was “embarrassed” about it.

“My mom says that I was embarrassed of our new house and that I asked the school bus to drop me off somewhere else. I don’t remember that, I don’t remember the loss of money being anything that I really felt,” she added.

Shifting the conversation to her mom’s romance with her best friend’s dad, Amy noted that she was “brainwashed” over it, before revealing where her relationship with her mom currently stands.

Amy explained: “It was told to me like, ‘We are are in love, I’m in love with someone for the first time, I realize I have never been in love before,’ and I was conditioned to be like, ‘Well I’m so happy for you, you deserve happiness.’ I was brainwashed to worship my mom and villainize my dad.

“They were together for two months, and then she met someone new and she said the same thing—’I met someone new, and now I really know what love is.'”

The comedian said she and her mom are now in a “good place” but confessed that she “really judged” Sandra from the age of 12 to 21.

However, she admitted that becoming a mother to her own son, Gene, now 5, with her husband, Chris Fischer, changed the relationship she has with her own mom.

“Now that I’m a mom and I’m around the age that she was, I’m like, ‘Look you don’t know,” she said. “She kept a roof over our heads, so I don’t know.”

In 2016, Amy made headlines when she repurchased her childhood farm her family lost when they went bankrupt.

“We lost the farm when we lost everything else,” the comedian said in an Instagram post at the time.

After she found fame with comedy, the 43-year-old garnered a great deal of wealth and is now worth an estimated $45 million.

The “Snatched” star is the proud owner of several homes—one of which now boasts a luxurious custom-built treehouse that was erected in a wooded area in her backyard and is estimated to have cost the actress $200,000.

Proudly unveiling the structure on Instagram, Amy revealed that she worked with renowned treehouse designer, Pete Nelson, owner of Nelson Treehouse, a company that creates all manner of dwellings for a wide range of clients.

The actress’s treehouse features many impressive amenities, including a large staircase that leads visitors up from the ground to the raised space via an expansive railed deck. That deck has been outfitted with a table and chairs for outdoor relaxation, while inside there is a large, L-shaped couch for maximum comfort.

The indoor space also has a colorful rug, beautiful wood-lined walls, and a large ladder that extends up to a spacious loft. The toys scattered about the inside of the treehouse suggest that it has been used regularly by Gene.

Nelson Treehouse has built structures all over the country. The company is based in Washington and states that it uses only the highest-quality hardware and tried-and-tested techniques that foster the longevity of both trees and treehouse.

As for the location of Schumer’s new treehouse, it’s unlikely that she was able to fit such an impressive structure in the backyard of her Brooklyn, NY, townhouse. A likelier spot would be the grounds of her home in Martha’s Vineyard, where her husband is from.

Schumer spent much of the pandemic in the upscale Massachusetts retreat, having left New York temporarily in 2020 amid lockdowns and increasing regulations.

Two years later, she put her Upper West Side penthouse on the market for $15 million, opting instead to relocate to a home in Brooklyn alongside Fischer and their son. She purchased that place in July 2022 for $12.5 million—$1.5 million over the asking price.

Her Brooklyn brownstone also boasts its own celebrity status, having been featured in the hit 1987 movie “Moonstruck.”

While the five-bedroom, four-bathroom property has been renovated since then, much of the home’s 1829 history remains. The grand-scale townhouse offers high ceilings, restored crown molding, hand-carved and milled trim, and millwork.