family homelessness

The preschool children and toddlers playing at 1900 Rainier Avenue S need to nap, play, and learn just like every other kid. The only thing different about these children is that they might not know where they are going to sleep that night.

But at the Early Learning program at the non-profit Wellspring Family Services, children at risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness can receive specialized curriculum and emotional and social assessment.

Because the experts of Wellspring Family Services know that children’s brains and future emotional behavior develops the most between the ages of one and five, they step in early to prevent future family homelessness and ensure stable lifestyles for children in crisis or transitional situations.

But Wellspring does not stop with the children—in addition to housing assistance and eviction prevention programs, it offers men’s domestic violence groups, chemical dependency support, and at-home therapist visits to ensure that leaned behavioral patterns go home where they are most needed.

Unlike other social services agencies and non-profits, Wellspring’s Baby Boutique, opened in 1995, offers one-stop shopping for entire familie. Parents can come in and outfit an entire family with clothes, toys for kids of all ages. It offers everything from toilets for potting training to prom dresses.

The Baby Boutique, like other organizations such as ReWA and Consejo, often offers internships and work experience for clients who have succeeded in their programs and are more than ready and willing to give back to the community. The boutique is supported by mothers who have previously used the services and young adults directed from the YWCA’s workforce placement program.

When I am researching family homelessness, the question that continues to recur is, what defines a family? In 2009, a two-parent homeless family made up 13.5 percent of the homeless population in Washington State, while a single woman with children made up nearly 27 percent of the population.

Not identified in this state report were children living in homeless situations with extended family members, such as a grandma or an aunt. According to a study by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly three million children lived with a grandparent without either parent present. That number increased to nearly seven million when parents had their parents living with them.

The problem with identifying families as only parents and children is that it may leave out the true head of the household. For instance, a grandfather may be the sole income generator for a single mother, but if they lose their apartment or house, the grandfather and granddaughter will more than likely have to be split up into different transitional housing units because units in the state only take what they classify as homeless women with children.

A broader definition of what creates a family needs to be determined to allow comprehensive services to be available to all types of families. There are families that are inter-generational and families with same-sex couples, families that take on the care for a friend’s child and families that consist of a brother and sister. Splitting these families up not only causes emotional stress, it also causes deep- rooted negative feelings towards agencies that may be trying to help them.

Where were you when you turned 18?

I was a senior in high school, celebrating the chance to finally call myself an adult. My family threw me a big birthday party complete with grilled chicken on the barbeque, grandma’s homemade pie, and plenty of presents. I had worries about which university I would choose or how prepared I was for fastpitch try-outs. What was definitely NOT on my mind was homelessness.

When a foster child turns 18, they are welcomed into adulthood with a notification that they are utterly on their own. Their foster family no longer receives benefits to house them. If the foster family is kind and able, the family will voluntarily agree to care for the foster child until he or she graduates high school, but not even half are so lucky.

According to a 2004 study by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), only 50 percent of foster youth graduate high school or earn a GED. The study goes on to say that within the first year of turning 18 years old, 57 percent of foster youth were unemployed. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that on average, only 23 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 19 years old are unemployed. Therefore, a foster child is more than twice as likely to be unemployed than a child not in foster care within the first year of adulthood.

Without an education, employment, and traditional family support, many foster youth end up on the streets. Not only is it unfair to the foster child to be forced out of their home when they turn 18, it also creates a major roadblock to their economic survival. I can’t say it any better than the DSHS study, which concludes by saying, “Foster youth need more concrete services in the areas of daily living skills, skills in obtaining housing, employment and education to help them transition successfully to independence.”

I hate moving. It is a long, laborious process that takes at least a couple of months to plan and a couple of months to recuperate. You have to find cardboard boxes, ask your friend with a truck to haul your stuff, make sure that your furniture will fit, and pay first, last, and a deposit.

Now imagine adding homelessness into the mix.

For the thousands of families experiencing homelessness for the first time, this process is much more painful. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), family homelessness has risen 56 percent over the last year. When a family becomes homeless, where do they keep their belongings? Can they afford a storage unit? How many pictures and teddy bears are lost in the process? Are the happy memories lost as well?

With family homelessness on the rise, social welfare agencies are overextended, nonprofits are cash-strapped, and considering the economy, even minimum-wage jobs are few and far between. The system itself doesn’t lend a hand. The homeless mom or dad can’t apply for a job without an address and can’t pass a credit check if they just lost their home to the mortgage crisis. Homeless families become stuck.

This is where organizations, such as First Place School, come in. On a recent Friday, I spent the day learning about statistics and strategies to end family homelessness and visiting First Place. The school, a cheery, brick building on Capitol Hill, is a private school for homeless children or children at risk of becoming homelessness. It is stocked full of everything a homeless family would need, including new clothes, supportive staff, and counseling, health, and housing services.

InvestigateWest has just embarked on a three-month reporting project to take a look at family homelessness in Washington, a problem that has escalated with the economy. The reporting is being done as part of a fellowship offered by Seattle University, which paired our project with two student interns. I’m excited to introduce the interns in their own words below:

Emily Holt writes:

On a typical Tuesday night in February, I left my quiet apartment chock full of books—textbooks, poetry books, novels—and drove up to 23rd Avenue where I was greeted by shouts, hugs and a few weary faces.

Like every other week, I smiled at the young woman to whom I was assigned to work and took out a piece of paper and a pen. I told her that we would try writing a poem, saying whatever she wanted to say.

For several weeks, through the holiday season, the young woman had been missing from our poetry group—a newly formed outlet for foster youth mentored by the national, non-profit program Friends of the Children. Mentors speculated she had been on the streets, but throughout the first weeks of the program, she remained quiet and poised. No one believed that the other life she lived—the one when we were not around—matched this beautiful young woman.

She stared at the floor as I encouraged her to bring up images of things that were comforting to her, but she remained silent. She smiled when I told her that anything she thought was beautiful was poetry. She laughed quietly when I told her that the cushioning in the cracked sofa we sat on was beautiful, to someone.

After twenty minutes, she finally spoke up. She told me that beauty was a warm dinner cooked by her grandmother, or just being in her grandmother’s house after being out in the cold.