Millions of women and children in the United States lose their homes at some point in their lives. We do not see them on the streets of our cities or towns. They stay in shelters, hotels, with friends. These women fear life on the street. Fear losing custody of their children.
Families like these can be found in every community across the United States. This film is the story of their struggle to survive. I am an example of... What true homeless can be like. A person can go from making $40,000 a year to being homeless.
It was just terrible, like there was no safety and I was always scared and like no words can describe, you know, like it's okay you can survive being in a shelter but when you've been... In shelters all like for 10 years, it's just not, it's not fun. It's hard. I pray not. I mean, I pray not, but I'm still a single mother.
And I still have three children, and my son is a special needs child. But natural disasters around the corner, loss of a job, the illness of someone in your family. If you think you're beyond it, then you're fooling yourself. Anybody can be there.
So, huh. I don't ever want to be homeless again, to answer your question, but to say that I will never be there again, I will do my best not to be. I have been the director now for 19 months. None of the women that's here today chose to be homeless.
Things just kind of happened where they ended up in this shelter. But I say I thank God for this shelter because 11 years ago I would have lost my children had it not been for the New Life Center. And after you've Been homeless, you will do whatever you can, whatever is in your power, to keep from being homeless again, to do what's best for your children. Things just happen in our lives sometimes that bring us down.
The beginning of our homelessness is a series of events that led to that being the final. Option. Single mother, two children.
My daughter was really sick and so I couldn't keep a job because I had to leave work or I had to miss work when she was sick. Child support was irregular at best. I got evicted because I couldn't keep up with the rent. I had enough money to, you know... to go to another place and that one lasted for two or three months until I couldn't work because she got sick or Scott quit paying his child support, lost a job, so...
I worked and we stayed in extended stay motels for a while. When we couldn't afford to stay there, we had to find a hotel whose rates were lower. We stayed there for a week and then, you know, we moved to another hotel for a couple nights until we could save up.
Because in the meantime, you're setting a little bit aside so you can get back to the extended stay motels because those at least were nicer. You know, they had the two bedrooms and the TV and the kitchenette. People would say, well, if you can stay in extended stays, how come you just can't come up with the money to get you a place to rent? And it's not as easy as they think, because that takes more upfront money. And we never had that much upfront money all at one time.
Not only did we go from house to house, but I ran out of friends that I could stay with. I never could quite secure enough money to get my own place again, and even when I did it... I couldn't maintain it.
We have figured out that a single mom with two children who worked a minimum wage job here in Phoenix would have to work 120 hours a week in order to afford an apartment. We have found that 60% of our children are below the developmental stage. and 30% of those children have significant delays.
Look, if you want to get a handle on children, then you go two ways. Because the government does collect the Department of Education number of homeless children in America, and I think they published kids in school about 800,000. Could be a little different now, but that sticks in my head. Then you take a look at the numbers and you find that the majority of children in homeless families are under the age of six.
So you plug that in, you're up to a million something in that number. As for families, they used 600,000 years ago. I don't know, but if I had to make a guess, I would say it's probably a million easy. A million and a million or two million kids easily. Your average family is one and a half kids.
There's no such thing as a half kid. So I say it's somewhere up there. And the other side is, what does it matter? Isn't one family enough to make the point?
It's very, very hard. If it wouldn't have been for the people at the shelter, I would be really, really, really out on the street because I have no family to depend on. My kids'fathers, they're not dependable.
And friends, they're no such thing as friends. It's like I'm the black sheep. I'm the one that, you know, a lot of people wants to fail and stuff.
I work at the Hilton Garden Inn. I make $7 an hour. I tried to get my own place, and my first place was the trailer. My landlord, she didn't want to fix pretty much anything, so I had to move out. What did they help you for up to 90 days?
They've tried... Housing and Section 8 and HUD and all that, but the lists are so long, it's so hard for them to get me or anybody else in at any of the shelters. It's just hard. Eleven years ago, I was living in a Section 8 rental trailer with my seven children.
I was a welfare mom at the time. After staying in that trailer for two months... Then the lights got turned off.
We went four months living in that Section 8 trailer without utilities. Well, nobody actually knew that we were living in there with no power because I maintained keeping the house clean. I sent the kids to school every day normal.
And one day I had a knock at the door, and it was OCS. She did tell me at that time that I had a week to get my power turned back on or I would lose my children. I even asked my mom could me and my children stay there, but she said no her home was not big enough for me and my seven children. OCS came back.
She says well it's either you go to a shelter or you lose the children and I said well the kids mean everything to me I'm not gonna lose the children. I was scared. I was actually scared and I felt alone.
I felt like my whole family had just turned away from me. Because I'm having to go to a shelter with my children and I have a mom who lived 15 minutes away and did not take me and my kids in. I've experienced homelessness since I was born and I don't know how many times.
It's just in and out and in and out of my childhood. Too many times to count. It would be like from three months to six months. We were never in one place for more than like a year.
Mostly it was shelters, all kinds of shelters, and people's houses. So we would be in somebody's house and we would sleep on the sofa or both of us in one room for a little bit. Or in a shelter we would be in a big room with a lot of beds. You just grow up with a mentality that you don't own anything. You have no belongings.
You don't have stuff. Family homelessness isn't on the street, because if they were, government has an obligation to remove the children. So they're not on the street.
And family homelessness is the best-kept secret in America. People don't relate to it or understand it. They know the adult. They see it.
You don't see families. And people don't know that the typical homeless person in America... As a child, if they knew that, they would ask questions.
They would say, why? Where's my money going? Why isn't government addressing this? You sound sad, something. Um, the day we left.
The day we left, my husband came in. He says, you know, I don't know what's going on with Daniel. He still can't stand up on his own two feet. He's falling on the floor.
He's tripping here and there, you know, foul. He got fouled out. He might as well just quit. He comes up to me and he says, the next time I tell you to do something, you do exactly as I say.
You do as I say or so help me, I'll get your head and see how many times I can bounce it against that wall. I was just not breathing. Breathing, I was just scared and I think that was the first time the little ones had seen that.
And he looked at Daniel and he says, didn't your mom tell you to take a shower? And he said, yes. He goes, well, why haven't you got it done?
So Daniel got up and he stood up and he got his books and he went like that. He said, don't you ever slam your books. And he went down there and I saw, I just saw, I just, I, when he started walking that way, I was like, oh my gosh, you know.
I need help. I need help because something's going to get out of control. All I saw was him go behind Daniel and I saw him raise his hand and said, I've got to get out of here.
So I ran to the front door and then I ran to my neighbor's house. We didn't find a shelter. We called a lot of places. But one lady did tell us, you know, you're really going to have a hard time because no one's going to take in a teenage male. And you might even have problems with your daughter's age.
Once they're past 12, you know, it's very hard to place a family. The system tends to push out those boys from the homeless population as part of the family. Most domestic violence shelters will not take boys over the age of 12. Many people don't understand how you can be 16 and 17 and end up homeless. Many times it's due to the mobility of our families, the economics of our families.
the mental state of our families. During that time, we stayed in three, four different homes. Four different homes.
Three permanent homes that we were at together, and then we always were at Lace's house on the weekend. I really wanted to go into a shelter so that nobody would know where we were. Then maybe I wouldn't have made the mistakes that I made, like I went to work right away and got a third job.
And left my kids alone until Erica told me, hey, you know, now they lost a father, now they lost a mother too. You know, you can't just work, work, work. I would have had some counseling for myself instead of yelling at my kids. And that's where, when you're with other people. In other people's homes, no matter what their intentions are, it's too crowded.
And as we learned, you know, the first house, it was just too much for us. My parents, there was conflict there, but I think mostly it was adventure. I really do. I was just an adventurous kid. I was from a small town, and I wanted to go out and see things and do things.
There was nothing to see and do in my small town. There was only drinking and drugging. That's the only kind of adventure that I could do.
Because otherwise, there wasn't a college there, there wasn't anybody skydiving there, there wasn't anybody doing art or poetry or anything that I could learn about that interested me. So the only thing that interested me was feeling good and feeling different. I thought I was brave because I did things that people were afraid of. I was proud of my hitchhiking and I was proud of my ability to do stupid things and not be afraid.
I like the living on the edge and I didn't think that what happened to me would happen to me in the beginning. You never think it's going to happen to you. You think you want to have fun and you make decisions when you're a kid when you're not able to make a decision that then you get in over your head and Become it becomes too much for you for me before I dived into my addiction I drove a brand new Honda car and I was what everybody thought they wanted in a woman I had a very successful professional life. But I also had injuries that I was fighting that kept me on pain medication. Lortab was my drug of choice.
I didn't have my child until I was well into my addiction. I was 35 years old. I stayed into my addiction when I was pregnant. I don't know how he came out so healthy because I was taken up to 15 Lortabs a day.
Sometimes 20, 25 if I had just gotten a prescription. When my son says, Mama, I want you to look like that again. And I thought, that'll never happen. Registered to do childcare for my home and I...
I did that for a while, but we lost that house. It just wasn't enough to make ends meet. I was evicted from five to seven different places that I can recall. You're so busy just trying to provide and just trying to survive that...
As sad as it sounds, you don't realize how much your children are affected by a move. Because they're looking for some continuity. They're looking for stability. They want to maintain their same friends. They want to know that, you know, when they come home, you're not going to have the car packed up ready to go with, you know, notices on your door wondering where in the heck you're going to go next.
High school was hard because you're going to school with kids who have had a house all their life, who have things and when you are homeless you don't value yourself like you don't see yourself as other kids see themselves. So I didn't value, I had low self-esteem you know I didn't feel like I was like that pretty girl with all that nice clothes. and stuff like that because I didn't have nice clothes because you know I live in the streets and I have this house but you know I don't know if I could lose it so I was really a scared and secure person and I didn't fit in with other kids that were secure.
I think it had a lot to do with my mom's sickness. She was always she suffers from being just nervous she was always a nervous person she never really got along with anybody. It was hard for her to keep a job.
And when we were with friends, they would end up kicking us out because they wouldn't be able to get along. So there was no money. She had no family to go to.
And we were just always in the streets with no backup, nobody to help us out. We do know that a homeless family that comes to UMOM has moved 5.7 times in the last year, which means the longest they've been anywhere is 70 days. You can imagine the impact that that has on the children, knowing that every 70 days they're going to be living in a different location, and what happens to their schooling, what happens to their belongings. And many times when they're moving, they're moving in with two or three other families in a one-bedroom apartment.
What we've created in America are poverty nomads. We've taught people to be poor and that being poor is a nomadic way of life. There is no low-income housing. And even if there was low-income housing, it would be very difficult for the population to maintain themselves. We have, the majority of our women are not married.
The majority of our women have two or three children fathered by different men. These are not traditional family structures, and the government, the federal government, is notorious for saying, we want traditional behavior from these families. But you can't have traditional behavior to give them time to assimilate it and what it is. You have 47% of our families are victims of domestic violence.
You can't throw these people in apartments like people keep saying. Just move into an apartment and it's solved. It's ridiculous.
These families are not just in need of housing. This is really the bottom of the poverty ladder. If you're going to be poor in America in the 21st century, at some point you're going to be homeless. I do child care for people.
I work for a couple people cleaning out rental units. I've painted houses, grouted tile, done all kinds of things, you know, done those things like that, you know, to make money. Because those are the things that I can do that work around doctor's appointments and kids'schedules and I can't get fired from.
And I don't commit to, you know, and I don't commit to anybody for a lengthy amount of time. So I don't, you know, I don't burn any bridges either. I took all the money that I had saved up and we got an apartment.
Six months later, Ivan hit. By this time too, I had already gotten another job. I was working as a three and four year old teacher at a local child care center.
I was getting it all back in check. Hurricane hits. We have to evacuate. I can't get back over the bridges to come home.
I lose my job because I can't get to work. We finally got across the bridge to get back home and we lost everything in my apartment. There was water damage.
The furniture was wet and musty and moldy. We were able to save anything that was non-porous. FEMA put us in a travel trailer and for months and months and months they told us, yep.
Yep, you're going to have to go. Here's your paperwork. You only have 18 months. You only have this.
You only have that. Well, what are you going to do? Kick these family, kick us out on the street? I've been there before. I'm not going there again.
But it took, who can I call? So I'd get on the computer, write a letter to Greg Evers, our representative. I'd write a letter to Scarborough. I'd write a letter to anybody that'll listen.
I'd call up the FEMA. Department, the main office, you know, what are y'all going to do with all of us? We have no place to go. You have no place to put us.
And even if you give us some place, first month's rent and deposit, how are we going to keep it up at $850 a month rent? And we lost our job because of this, and you can't get that back for us, so what are we supposed to do? There isn't low-income housing being built, and it won't be built.
If it hasn't been built in all this time, where's it going to come from? You have a government that's running deficits that are phenomenal. You have a middle class that is shrinking and going lower.
You have a middle class and a working class that are losing their housing. So the question is, who comes first? People at the bottom or the people that are paying taxes in the middle? It's not rocket science. I don't know, you know, I thought I was in love.
And so we met in Korea and then he had orders to Germany and I came back to the States and then I went to Germany. The first time he hit me was in Korea. We were driving, it's not even a mile from the gym to the front gate to get out. And he was driving, he was upset and just got, you know, he says, you know, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of your attitude, I'm sick of the way you act, you need to change. Right as we passed the mess hall, he just slammed me.
And I was so scared. And we were getting close to the gate. I thought, I'm not going to go home. I don't know what's going to happen. I was scared more because...
We were on post, so I was twice as scared to go home. Once something so bad happens, then that was, those were the incidents that kept me in this relationship. I mean, that kept the fear of leaving this relationship. I realized I gave him power and control because I was afraid. I knew what he could do.
I knew what he did to me. Domestic violence is a leading cause into homelessness. We have found though in our evaluations of our families that 93% of them have experienced some type of emotional trauma, whether that is as a child or as an adult. My biological mother. I was an alcoholic.
Addiction ran deep in my family. My dad had one hand. He shot one hand off on a hunting trip. So he was an addict of pain pills.
You know, he would warn me, be careful, they're going to take over your life. The more morphine I gave him, the more I gave myself. And I grew up with so much love.
It just, it did all of a sudden, in just about a couple of years, it was all gone. So what I do now is outreach for the community. So I engage volunteers, and once I do get the volunteers here, I try to teach them about homelessness so that it becomes their passion as well.
My father was a very religious man, and it never made sense to me, and he was very strict, and so he would tell me that I was going to hell if I didn't do it. I was just kind of normal and I fought him all the time. Very rebellious.
I started drinking when I was nine years old and I was regularly drinking approximately three times a week when I was 11 years old. So I just progressed from there. I went to treatment when I was 14 and learned about all these other drugs that I hadn't tried yet and for some strange reason I thought It was glamorous to do drugs. I don't know how, I guess it was a good marketing on their part, but I didn't graduate from high school because I didn't get enough credits to do so because I was always sent somewhere or I ran away with a carnival. I hitchhiked across the country.
I had no fear in anything. I met him in college and I was going to school with a grandma. And we were together for three and a half years all together. And we moving together and everything was fine and then it got to the point to where he wasn't coming home at night and I found out that he slept with my first cousin and it was just very stressful and I couldn't deal with it but he's a wonderful father.
It's just when it comes to a relationship it's not something that I want to do. And my little boy dad, he's from New Iberia, he... He lied to me about all kinds of stuff.
And he's been in and out of jail. And there was stuff that I didn't know about him that was already going on. And that's not something that I want around my children because I've been through a lot.
And I don't want my kids to go through what I've been through. I was the youngest of six. My older four sisters, who are beautiful and thin and skinny, they all thought I was a piece of crap.
crap and they read my diary so then they really knew I was a piece of crap. I hung around with older people. I started shooting up when I was 16. I just did whatever I wanted.
So I basically got in over my head. I made a decision when I was a child and you know I had to pay the consequences for it later. In the end I was in Phoenix and I was no longer in my small town of 192 people and Phoenix beat me up pretty badly.
I came down here. We were homeless together and then he went to jail and I was homeless alone. And by this time I was shooting up again because my boyfriend was in jail. And so I would look at the spoon and just say, don't do it. Don't do it.
You hate the way it makes you feel. You've got to stop. You're never going to get it together unless you do it. Don't do it. And I couldn't.
It was like my hands were on automatic. And then I realized that Everything that they had said in treatment about it being a disease and having no control anymore, it was the first time I didn't want it and I couldn't stop. And I also didn't want to come, go back to Minnesota with my tail between my legs to have my sisters just look at me like, and everybody look at me as such a failure as I thought and felt I was. So it just got the best of me. I went to my OB doctor appointment and they listened to the heartbeat and then the doctor said to me he looks up and he says I think I hear another heartbeat I said oh no you only hear one heartbeat I'm homeless I have seven children already I can't afford to take care of two more babies I just can't do it he said I'm sorry but I think I hear another heartbeat but I'll schedule you for an ultrasound.
They came on February 18th earlier than expected we went back to the shelter stayed in the shelter an additional two months and then I was ready to move out. With the money that I had saved, and plus Larry continued to send me more money, I was able to rent a two-bedroom home. Two days later, the twins'daddy moved in with us.
I didn't see a problem. He was always a good man, good to us when we lived in New Iberia. Well, I thought things were good.
It really could depend on Larry to a certain extent because he was in a lot of pain. He was on a lot of pain medicine, and that was not good. Well, he started taking more than just pain meds, and I started to notice that.
If I stayed on welfare, I knew that eventually I wouldn't be able to make it if I put him out. And behind my head, I was thinking, I have to get him out of here. Daniel's a graft baby. Graf and Vera's where Hitler trained his army.
So when he came back from that long field exercise, I got pregnant with Daniel. Gabrielle's a Saudi baby. Cameron's a binocular. baby and then Brandon's Cuba baby when he went to Cuba and came back I got pregnant with him.
So that's what made me stay in my bad marriage so long is that I just thought you have to have two parents to really provide for your kids. In the military if if you report something it makes the plot report and there you get reprimanded and the first thing you do you know in article 15 is take away your money take away your privileges. So for us, you know, we were a young couple. He was a specialist.
I was a specialist. Then if I call the police on him, then he's gonna get an article 15. Well, then he's not making that specialist pay. You know, he can lose his rank. Then he was a sergeant, E-5.
So if he loses that pay and loses his rank, then, you know, I'm gonna pay for that. If I wanted to open my mouth, you know, I would be in jeopardy of losing. Our post housing, rank, money, that would be all my fault.
And so I had to keep mum, keep quiet. Over those several months, I was able to save up some money, had a group of friends, and this is where I met Aiden's father. When I told him I was pregnant, his verbatim statement...
was I would rather have been stepped on by a 10-ton elephant than for you to have told me that and he agreed to pay for an abortion of which I declined and that was pretty much our last conversation Aiden will be four on the 29th of April and I have received one partial payment you From Aiden's father, it took us until November of 2007 to even get him into court. And Aiden was born April 29th of 2004. And yet, in the meantime, we're trying to take care of a child. And it's one thing you're trying to take care of a neurotypical child.
I'm trying to take care of a child with autism. Did you have fun? Did you have fun, honey?
I just finished, I graduated from the university in December, so I had Pell grants, student loans. I owe a great deal of money in student loans because that is how we made it. I get support from my girl's father.
He lives the same town my father and stepmother live in. It's not like he couldn't attempt to see them, he just doesn't. That hurts Taylin.
Cortland. Calls him her DNA donor. It hurts her too.
It's not like he doesn't know where they are. And they know that now. The older they get, the angrier they get.
And then they blame me. How come I don't have a father figure? I'm like, well there's no daddy store where I can go out and get this specific person for you. Let's see who we got.
I found the answer to my cocaine addiction and that was crystal meth. So it was cheaper, I didn't shoot it up, it made me feel so okay. And I lost weight and so I felt like I, because my parents were always looking at me like I was chubby and just the, you know, not the chosen one.
And I became so destroyed during that time where I was very thin. I had scabs all over my face. Somebody called me a skanky bitch, I remember, and thinking, I am a nice young girl from Minnesota.
What has happened to me? So then I would look in the mirror and I would say, look at you. I had a baggie in my hand and a razor blade right there, and that's what I look like. It's hard to see, but I had splotches all over my face, and my hair should have been long, but it was shrinking down here, up there. It was just...
And that was just a mess. And that was the last picture and the only picture, because when you're out on the street, you don't get many pictures taken. During this last seven months, I had gotten kicked out of 11 different places, and most of them were very dysfunctional, drug-addicted men who took me in on a whim. And when they realized that I was out of my mind, they got sick of me and threw me out. Usually, stuff...
Flying through the air, out, and I would pick up my few little belongings and then meet somebody, some guy in the parking lot. It was just so scary, and I didn't believe that I deserved the space that I took up in the world. I hated being homeless.
I was afraid of being homeless. The first time I came to New Life was October 2006. January of 2007, they kicked me out. I was so lost, I drank myself into oblivion.
When my mother died, she died of a lung collapse, she died of pneumonia. She knew her lung collapsed, she went home to die. We didn't find her until two days later because she lived alone. We didn't live with her. I hated her for that.
She chose to die. She could have fighted it. So I started fighting.
I was, don't give up on your child. You know, what are you? You hate your mother because she didn't fight to live. And now you have this child that God blessed you with. When you weren't supposed to have a child at all, you had this child at 36 years old.
Fight. And I started fighting. My mother was murdered. She was out, not at home. And we just, I woke up one morning and one night I helped dress her to go out with her friends and the next morning she's not there.
I don't really know the whole story. I think she asked this kid for help and she was bludgeoned to death. And... Left on a dead end road for, you know, days. She was out there.
The only reason they were able to find him was because small town that I'm from, somebody saw him carrying her around the car. You know, he told them he brought them to the body and it was closed casket so I didn't get to see her. My dad said I wouldn't have wanted to. I miss her.
She had the most beautiful smile of any person I've ever seen. My dad was moving on with his life. I'm a teenager. Teenagers are already trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in, and now I'm trying to figure out all this too.
Like, why? Should I, you know, should I have kept her home? What if I said, please don't go, you know, stay home with me?
What if I was sick that night? Would she have stayed home? I mean, those thoughts cross your mind on a regular basis. You know, what would it be like if she were here? Would I have made the same decisions?
Would I have fallen into the same crappy relationships, you know, one after another? And I don't know that. Like, what if myself to death, and then I would not be getting anywhere? I don't know.
I think I was drunk in my prom picture. I kind of got kicked out, but yeah. I actually got thrown out. Because I came home drunk from going out with some friends. To be quite honest, that was the only time I could ever tell my dad exactly what I was really feeling.
And he was telling me how I was a bad example on the, you know, on the stepbrother and stepsister. And I had just lost it. I was like, you're more concerned about them than you are about the things that are going on in my life. And we just got into a tussle and, you know, pretty much. Took me by my hair and threw me out the door and my shoes right behind me.
And he's not the one that came after me. My stepmother did. I'm walking, going to a friend's house and, you know, she stops and, you know, she chases me.
And I don't even know what time this is. You know, she chases me and she asked me to get in the car. Just come home, we'll work this out. And I didn't. I said, there's nothing to work out.
I was, you know, just so angry. And she really tried. So she said, well then at least let me take you where you're going.
Because she didn't want me walking. So she made sure I was safe. Can we stop for a minute? Between Gabrielle and Cameron, he was cheating and I knew it.
I sensed it. When I would question him, he'd strike at me, you know, strike at my face. And then...
There was a big argument and he said, leave. I told you to leave. I don't want you anymore.
And I thought, I can't go. How am I going to go back to my family? Pregnant.
He says, that's not my problem. That's your problem. Get out of my house. I don't want you here.
I guess it was my pride. I just thought, I cannot go home. I have two kids. I'm pregnant with my third. How am I going to go home?
So I thought, I'm going to have to take my punishment and work. Either I have to save enough money to get out of here or I got a plan and escape. Brandon was born in July 1995 and after that I said that's it, you know, I'm having my tubes tied.
With you or not, here I am, I got some guts, I'm gonna get this done. I just didn't want kids. I mean I love my kids, I didn't want any more. I had enough now. And the night before, my husband just lost it with me.
And he was physical with me. And he said, I don't care how you get there, you know. All I know is I'm not taking you and I'm not watching these kids.
And I don't know how you're going to get out of the house. I knew, you know, I'm not going to be safe. And so it was easy just not to show up.
When I went for a... A follow-up checkup from being pregnant with Brandon. I asked them, and they said, you know, we're not going to bother with you. They said, I don't think they're willing to do the surgery anytime soon.
I don't know if they knew, or, you know, I'm sure they have a lot of domestic violence cases. So I just, okay. I was in a lot of foster homes.
About four to five foster homes. When I was a child, I asked my mom why I was not living with her and she said that because she didn't want me to live on the streets with her. So I figured she would just put me in foster home so she could get on her feet.
So it took her many times for her to get on her feet. At that time, nobody sat down to... say what was going on. So it was very confusing and very scary and very lonely because you're with people you never knew. Like, it's just like a little dog that they have.
They just feed you and put you to sleep and that's it. You know, there's no communication. There's no love.
We find that many of our homeless adults have grown up in foster care and group homes. And they've not bonded and they don't have that support or a family, nor do they know what a family is. And so that just carries on from generation to generation.
I was molested at 12 years old. I tried to tell my mom and my family, but no one would believe me. So I kind of started acting out on it, running away, because I really didn't want to be home. And I would just run away. And then one day, I sat in my class and I wrote a note to my coach.
And I told him everything that happened, and I left a letter on top of his desk. And the OCS worker came to see me and talk to me. And she asked me where that happened.
I told him I was being molested by my stepfather and that no one believed me. He admitted that he did it and then the same day he went to jail and my mom bailed him out. And then the next day I woke up that morning. I called my OCS worker because when I woke up he was still in the house and from there I went to the Methodist Children's Home in Ruston, Louisiana. And then I moved back here like about a year later and I started staying with my foster parents.
And I continued school and I graduated with a track scholarship and I went to Gremlin. I felt hurt. I felt like she didn't love me.
I still to this day feel like that she doesn't love me. Because like if I'll sit down and talk to her and talk about the past, you know, and just get it all out on the table and get out the way. She doesn't want to talk about it.
She, you know. She doesn't want to hear none of that. My mom and real dad was divorced when I was four. My real daddy lived one house over.
But I remember when I was about ten. Yeah, I was ten because I hadn't started my cycle yet. My stepdad started coming into my bedroom at night. He did not rape me. But he would do things to me the way you would think.
You wanted to just die. And I told my best friend who lived across from me, she said, you got to tell your mom. So I went to my mom, and I told my mom with my friend right there, and she didn't believe me.
I'm 41 today. And I still live with the fact that she didn't believe me. She did nothing.
She turned her back on me from that day on, and it just started to get worse. I remember her not speaking to me, not giving me anything. She wouldn't even sit at the table. with me.
And I'm her oldest child, so I left. And I went to there with my grandmother and grandfather. And my grandmother believed me. When I think about it, home was really not home.
Home wasn't safe for me. I would much prefer being at my grandmother's. Than being at my own home with my sisters and brothers, who I love.
And my mom, who I still love. But I am so uncomfortable being in that house and having my stepdaddy come. I'd just rather stay away.
I'd rather stay away. I feel that she chose him over me. That is why the things that happened in my life happened the way they did. I was looking for something to replace that empty spot that I felt from not having the securities of a home.
You know, I think that's why I got pregnant, I got married, had the kids. You know, I thought that if I had all those things, I'd be happy. If my mom would have just listened and believed what I was telling her, we would be much closer.
Why in this day and age, in our country, with all the advancements that we have, why are there homeless children on our streets? Why are there people hungry on our streets? That shouldn't be.
Given what we know about homeless families, about homeless children, about the resources that we need, and especially the lack of affordable housing, something needs to be done. to be done. We need to prioritize families in this country and we need to prioritize our children. Federal government doesn't have a cohesive approach to homelessness.
They say housing is the answer, yet they don't fund housing and this is where homelessness really comes from. And then they started to defund all of the safety net programs whether it be childcare, employment, all of these different medical programs, everything, food stamps, went down. And all that they did was institutionalize poverty into certain areas.
All the public programs to help poor people, like, for example, food stamps, Medicaid, after-school programs where kids could go. They're so important because when you're poor, it's all you have. Don't discriminate. We're not a disease.
We're not going to hurt you. We're people. We need your help too. We need your support. And if everybody would just come together to support homelessness, maybe we could put an end to homelessness.
Maybe we could put a smile on a child's face at night when mom tucks that child into his own bed. That's what we all want. I'm scared to death.
I'm scared to death to leave here. Because ain't nobody going to monitor me if I leave here. Ain't nobody going to say, take this drug test or... If I leave here, I'm going to be on the streets. I'm going to lose my job.
Everybody's got their story, but we have to honor their history and why people have gotten to be the way they are. And the mere fact that I got better is a miracle and there's so many people that don't. And it doesn't mean that they're bad people, they just didn't have the right circumstances to get better in the right timing.
So this was my first year sobriety and I was back in Minnesota with my parents and they were very happy. To have me back, you know, I don't know why it worked for me and so many die. I'm just lucky, I think, because there's nothing special about me.
You know, we lived at the homeless shelter at Loaves and Fishes, so I'm pretty familiar with the downtown area. Yes. Talk to you.
Can I talk to you? I have an interview with Bruni Emanuel with the Escarosa Coalition on Homelessness to help him set up building a homeless coalition network in Santa Rosa County. I can't say I'll never be there again, but I can say is that I have more tools now than I had before to do my best. To not be there again. Plus I know what it was like and I will fight tooth and nail and harder than I've ever fought for to make sure I'm not there again.
I go to NMSU, I go to school, I go to college and I work. I have a job as a work-study in school and I have a job taking care of disabled and old people after school and it's helping me build my character and my self-esteem. And I really enjoy going to college because I know that I'm doing something for myself. I just want to be happy because so many years of not being happy and being scared and being frustrated and just being a sad person, you just want to be happy like a normal person, you know what I mean?
So if I get my degree and I get my job and I... I get a house and I can pay my bills. I think that's like what I want right now.
And maybe later I'll figure out what else I need, but right now I just want to be happy. My life is great. I live, I can, you know, I smile now and my smile is like, you know.
I'm not afraid of Mr. Johnson anymore. I would say a year ago I was still afraid. Even after we got our legal separation, I was fearful of him retaliating.
and I would be afraid of that confrontation. Now I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid because he can't physically harm me any more than I've already allowed him to.
I wanted an ending. I wanted an ending. And I have to remember that my life's not over.
This is just that part of my life. My life is this big. And I have a future to look forward to.
And I would really... I like a career working with people because I got a big mouth. I got to talk to people.
I want to be around people. This year is a hard year so as soon as this year's over I'm really gonna look into me going back to school. That thought is always in the back of your head after you've been homeless. You always think about being homeless again.
That's, and it's been 11 years for me, and I never, ever forget just thinking about, you know, if I lose my job. You know, it's scary. It's a scary thought, you know.
I got a house note now. I got a truck note. My goal for me is to remain a homeowner.
And not ever be homeless again. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.
And you know how I'm gonna do it? I'm gonna do it by work. I'm determined to keep a job. And if I lose one job, Ms. Angela can get another one. I am not gonna end up homeless again.
When these interviews were recorded in 2008, unemployment averaged 6%. By November 2009, unemployment had reached 10%.