Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Ned Gerard/Hearst Connecticut Media.
A homeless camp set up in Connecticut.

We really do have housing crisis in this country, and it’s going to be expensive to fix it. Government can’t do it alone, says my friend Jeanne, who has been researching the subject. It will require partnerships with builders and communities that imagine the current situation can’t hurt them.

In the meantime, don’t blame the people who fall into homelessness. It’s harder than ever to work your way out.

Joana Slater writes at the Washington Post about a woman in Connecticut who has been there and now assists others. “Shanta Wiley sits down in a swivel chair, slips on a black headset and takes a deep breath. Three minutes to go. It’s 7:57 a.m. on a Friday, and the Connecticut homelessness hotline that Wiley staffs is about to open.

“With each shift, Wiley hears from people sleeping in cars and parks, people evicted by landlords or turned out by relatives. Frightened, angry, vulnerable people seeking shelter at a time of rising rents in one of the most expensive states in the country. Calls have surged in recent years, and Wiley’s job is to funnel a tide of need toward limited help.

“On this morning, Wiley’s mind is still on one of the prior day’s callers: a young woman living in her car with her 2-year-old child. For several minutes, Wiley just listened to her cry. Then they made a list of next steps to find a spot at a shelter.

“She’s still thinking about the woman when a beep sounds on the line.

“ ‘211 Housing Crisis,’ Wiley answers, her voice light and even. ‘Shanta speaking, how can I help you?’

“It’s a mother of two girls, ages 5 and 6. She’s staying temporarily in a hotel in the southern part of the state. Checkout is in three hours and she doesn’t know where to go. Before the hotel, she and her kids were staying in a car, ‘taking washes at McDonald’s and stuff,’ the woman says. ‘There’s nobody out here to lean on at all.’

“ ‘Completely understand,’ says Wiley. ‘Glad to assist you.’

“Behind the courtesy is a story the caller will never hear. Wiley understands exactly how the woman is feeling. She knows, because she was once the person calling for help.

“Wiley, 41, started working at the 211 Housing Crisis Line, which is run by United Way of Connecticut, in January. For nearly a decade, it has served as the central access point for all shelters in the state.

“The work is a window into the acute shortage of affordable housing nationwide and the withdrawal of pandemic-era programs aimed at protecting Americans from eviction and hunger. …

“So much of what [Wiley] hears on the calls echoes her own experience. There was the man who, when Wiley asked when he last ate, said he was fine with a cup of coffee. Wiley remembered that well. When she had no money for groceries at the end of the month, she’d let her kids eat while she just drank coffee. …

“Wiley went to a high school with a lively debate program, which she loved. In her senior year, she became pregnant and had a baby boy. She still graduated. After a year, she dropped out of college and later broke up with her fiance. It was the start of a long period of instability. She had another son and was staying with her parents when they were evicted from their apartment in 2005. Wiley and her two boys, the youngest an infant, ended up in a shelter in south Hartford.

“Even then, she was always working, always pushing ahead with her studies. At the shelter, Wiley’s mom watched the kids while Wiley worked the overnight shift processing checks for Bank of America. For four years, Wiley worked at Target. She completed her associate’s degree and later her bachelor’s in business administration.

“But steady housing remained elusive. Many landlords seemed wary of renting to a single mother. There were spells staying with her mother, with a cousin, with a boyfriend. She and her boys slept on couches and living room floors.

“In 2012, she was living at her mother’s place when it was condemned, forcing the whole family, yet again, to look for somewhere else to live. A friend told Wiley about an apartment available in her building.

“It was the worst one yet: Drug dealers hung out inside the front entrance and patrolled the halls. The building was regularly raided by police. Wiley remembers sitting at the kitchen table and crying as she tried to finish a college paper on entrepreneurship while people used drugs outside in the hallway.

“After a month, she saw a listing for a place nearby and grabbed it. She had started a new job with the Hispanic Health Council doing outreach with pregnant women. That meant she needed a car to do home visits, so she purchased a used Saturn Ion.

“Soon she faced a choice familiar to many on the hotline: Either she lost the car critical to her job, or she fell behind on rent. She chose the latter. If she had to, she reasoned, she would park her car in her mom’s driveway and her kids would sleep inside while Wiley stayed in the vehicle.

“Midmorning, Wiley takes the first of two 15-minute breaks. … She just sighs.

“ ‘It’s heavy,’ she says. … Especially in situations where ‘there’s no answer — or not much of an answer.’

“Sometimes, when Wiley puts callers on hold to look up information or arrange appointments, she uses it as a chance to step away from the intensity of the need. …

“At 11:56, Wiley takes a call from a mother of two children, ages 3 and 13. They’ve recently arrived in Connecticut from Georgia and are staying with a friend, but it’s a volatile situation. The woman is reluctant to say more. Wiley explains that she will arrange an intake interview for a shelter, but a spot is not guaranteed.

“ ‘Are you okay?’ she asks. ‘Not really,’ the woman replies, and begins to cry. Wiley urges her to get her teenager enrolled in school and directs her to the state’s child-care hotline so she can apply for assistance for her toddler.

“ ‘She has to get that child in school as soon as possible,’ Wiley says. That’s the very first thing Wiley would do when she and her boys were in a new area. It gave them a sense of normalcy, she says, plus ‘I could think while they’re in school.’ …

“Wiley’s mind is on the future. She is teaching herself a programming language so she can look for work as a data analyst to increase her pay. ‘I want to break those generational curses,’ she says.

“Her older son is studying to become a machinist and her younger son is preparing to attend the Connecticut School of Broadcasting. … A few weeks ago, her older son, Justus, gave her a measure of closure. He told her everything that had happened to them wasn’t all her fault. ‘He’s like, “You were always working and going to school. You really was trying,” ‘ Wiley recalls.

“Looking back, Wiley says there were times she made poor decisions. But mostly, it’s a question of the system, she says. What she hears on her calls hasn’t changed much since she was one of the callers.

“ ‘You have to literally be at the total bottom before they help you,’ she says. ‘They’re not going to help you before you get to that point.’ ”

Do you notice how many of those experiencing homelessness are women with young children? In addition to the lack of housing, something else is definitely not right.

More at the Post, here. For deeper insight, read Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, here, or Tracy Kidder’s Rough Sleepers, here.

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