We will find our own way out

Posted by Carey Fuller in Homelessness - (2 Comments)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about homelessness it’s that you cannot rely too much on government programs to provide safety nets for it’s citizens. Used to be a time Social Services could prevent and get people out of homelessness but no more. Making cutbacks on the heads of those who need it the most is suicide yet it continues to happen. Let’s face it, people are self interested and the majority won’t get involved unless there’s “something in it for them” and no matter how hard you want to believe that isn’t true, it is. Then there’s those who think that somebody else is going to fix the mess we as a society have allowed to happen. If the government chooses to let the rest of the population not in the 1% wither and die, does that mean we should too? When the government does get involved, it’s usually overregulated and badly managed.

The homeless epidemic in this country is a disaster and should be treated the same way. There are just too many people in the world who believe that they’ve done all they can so they “let it go”. Well I’m sorry but us homeless people are done hearing that all the time. We are not disposable human beings nor are our children. We as a society are responsible for letting things get as bad as they have and we as a society are responsible for fixing it! Instead of trying old ways of doing things, don’t just think outside the box, get out of it and create a new model that works based on real time experience that proves what works and what doesn’t. Believe it or not, it’s not as overcomplicated as some would have us all believing. I suspect the problem is simply that those who want to help can’t, and those who can do more just don’t want to. Sure, I can sit around and justify all kinds of reasons for looking the other way at another person’s suffering but what’s the point? Rather than waste time with apathy, I’d rather be doing what I can to make a difference in the world I live in.

Here comes the “what if” segment of this blog: What if people volunteered their time in a massive fundraising event that is also a subtle protest? What if a group of people stood near exit off ramps and near major shopping areas and held up cardboard signs saying “I’m not asking for myself, I’m doing this because a newborn will be sleeping outside tonight if I don’t”? What if I approached local businesses one by one and literally begged them to donate a few dollars here and there on a regular basis to pay for motel stays for homeless families? What if entire neighborhoods held community yardsales for the needy and used the proceeds to create their own motel vouchers or to help pay rent to prevent folks from becoming homeless in the first place? I know of several churches with huge parking lots capable of holding homemade “carnivals” complete with $3 meal deals consisting of a hotdog, chips and a soda. The point is, there is always a way to raise funds without spending too much money on it. All you need is a willing spirit.

The above paragraphs being said, I’ve decided to start having little community meetings on Saturdays over at Kona Kai’s to educate people on what they don’t know about homelessness and who the local homeless people are and I will be inviting different people to them for different reasons. I already know that being put on indefinite waiting lists for housing puts everybody at risk and that the only way to save lives is to go around bureaucracy. We will have to find our own way out of the mess we got stuck with when social services and our economy got stripped.

See you all next Saturday!

 

 

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What would you do?

Posted by Carey Fuller in Homelessness - (18 Comments)

After talking further with this new job, I discovered that I’ll be getting less than 20 hours a week. Since this is a caregiver type position, I will be required to drive to two different clients, and the first one I met with last night was 30 miles away from Maggie’s school and tentative daycare. The second client is 30 miles away from the first one so we are looking at 60 miles one way. Multiply that by $4 a gallon. First client only needs me for 3 hours a day. Second client also only needs me for part time hours and after I added up the hours, it came to 15 hours a week. Now multiply that by $10 an hour. Keep in mind that childcare expenses are $119.00 a week after I front the registration fee and first week’s rate of $119.00 in advance.

I talked to the daycare and told them that this new job only pays once a month and they said they couldn’t wait that long to be paid so that means I have come up with cash for the entire month until my first paycheck next month. Obviously, after I get that first check, it won’t be enough to pay for childcare or all the gas I spent going to client’s homes. The daycare receptionist asked if I qualify for childcare assistance through the state and I told her yes but it’s not immediate, there is a 6-8 week waiting list before they would pay and that won’t help right now.

This blog will be a short one because all I want to know is….what would you do?

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So what have you been up to lately?

Posted by Carey Fuller in Homelessness - (1 Comments)

Yesterday an acquaintance said to me “So what have you been up to lately?” I answered “Well so far, I’m trying to help a single mother of a 12-day old baby not sleep in her car tonight or any night since she was told this morning she had to leave a friend’s house asap because he “had his own things going on” therefore she had to leave. When she asked her church for help she was told “We aren’t that kind of a church. We don’t do charity giving”. “Nicole” panicked and was ready to sleep in her car that does not run. If it hadn’t been for a local activist who remembered me, I would’ve never found out about “Nicole”. Right after that,  I helped a pregnant 19 year old mom and her her boyfriend get two nights stay at a local hotel so their two year old won’t be sleeping outside tonight. The only way to do that was to post her situation out on Twitter and Facebook and thankfully, anonymous donors came to their rescue. I met with the owners of the Kona Kai to discuss their empowering youth project through the HALO Foundation and to see what I could do to help their business grow as they have expressed their desire to hire me in a social media capacity. I’ve been meeting and planning with the Reverend Jimmie James about the One Church One House campaign to engage local churches to do more than hand out sandwiches at a local park when people need housing now. In addition, a group of us would like to contact local celebrities to put on a benefit concert at the Showare (or anywhere for that matter) to raise funds to help Kent’s homeless population, especially the youth. While I’m doing all of that, I’m scrambling to find childcare for this new $10 an hour job, look for housing I can’t pay for right now, get maintenance done on the van, call around for a dentist to look at Maggie’s broken tooth, find a vision provider for Ariella but Saturday I hung out with a reporter from the New York Times to let him see what an average day for local homeless youth was like; police harassment included! I stopped by my garden plots to do a little maintenance after somebody let a dog loose through it even though dogs are supposed to be on leashes and not allowed to be in the garden area. Did I leave anything out?” After a long pause my acquaintance friend could only say “Wow….”

Even as I write this I am filling out a childcare application for Maggie. I took Maggie on a tour of the daycare center yesterday after I picked her up from school and Maggie really liked what she saw. The place is super secure and they have their own transportation to and from school. I have to pay a $60 registration fee but I told them I am new to Auburn and I just started a job so how would this work with the $119.00 fee? To my surprise and relief they said if I paid the registration fee, they could work with me on the weekly rate. Only thing is, since this job pays once a month, I’m not sure they will wait that long to get paid so I’m gonna have to come up with funds just to carry us until the first payday. That’s when I’ll know if I can make enough to pay for childcare for a month because I’m being started off at part-time hours …tomorrow! As you are reading this please keep in mind that there’s a lot more going on in the background that I don’t tweet or mention on Facebook. I tweet and post as things are happening because I don’t have the luxury of just posting the most negative thing I can think of. What too many people don’t realize is that I don’t have a lot of time to make things happen. If I miss the window of opportunity while it’s available then it’s another lost chance I can’t afford to keep losing. That’s a fact of homelessness too many don’t get so now you know why I take readers with me to see how life really is; tweet by tweet, post by post. What I do and what I write about is an uncomfortable reality but it is a reality the rest of the world needs to see.

In a perfect world, I would have access to funds that would allow me to run my own charity to directly help the local homeless instead of letting them wither and die while being put on indefinite waiting lists. I would have an income that would put us in permanent housing immediately so I wouldn’t feel like I’m a burden to other people or be put at risk of violent crimes while I’m out here. I would have time to actually enjoy my kids’ childhood. But there’s no such thing as a perfect world and whether observers like it or not, I am living a reality they don’t have a clue about.

So, what have you been up to lately?

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Getting a job ain’t the end of the story….

Posted by Carey Fuller in Homelessness - (5 Comments)

I got a job. Yes, really. A homeless mother got a job that pays $10.00 an hour, before taxes. Getting a job is all it takes to get out of homelessness, right? So while we’re here why don’t we see what exactly $10 an hour will get you. Say I get 40 hours a week, which by the way is no guarantee but for the sake of argument, say I get 40 hours a week. That adds up to $1,600.00 a month, gross. Subtract current federal, social security and Medicare taxes of $172.30 and I’m left with a net of $1,427.70. Before and after school childcare for my 8 year old will run about $600 a month (if I go with a daycare center). That leaves me with $827.70. Out of that $827.70, figure $320 for gas at the current price of $4 a gallon for my van; now I’m down to $507.70. Now subtract $400 for food for a family of three. Cheapest car insurance I could find for the van online for my state is $175.27 after a $30.50 coupon. Is there enough left over to get out of homelessness?

I found out that if I want to get health insurance through my employer for my kids, it will cost me over $800 a month so you can see why I can’t do that. By the way, currently all I get from the state is food stamps and basic health insurance. What do you think happens to those benefits when you report to the state that you got a job?

The options I have look like this:

Scenario 1: I take another job (if I can get one) which will put me at risk of having another stroke/seizure.

Scenario 2: I don’t take the job and try for a higher paying position somewhere else but…that runs the risk of running out of resources without any guarantee I will be hired to a higher paying job.

Scenario 3: At this point I don’t know if I’ll be working days or nights but say I get assigned to a night shift. I can’t afford childcare or a babysitter at the going rate of $10 an hour and forgo childcare altogether by leaving my kids to sleep in the car while I work (something I actually did while working an $8.00 an hour job at night when we lived in our old Minnie Winnebago).

Scenario 4: I abandon my kids to the state and care only for myself. My teenager is 17 and would be aged out of the Foster Care system within a year and be on the streets herself.

Scenario 5: I commit suicide. (Not that I would but I know of mom’s in my situation that think about it)

 

The only way I can get another job is to fake not being homeless. I have to make it look like I’m currently working somewhere so it doesn’t look like I’ve got any gaps in my employment history. Second, now that I just lost the only address I had, what am I going to put on a job application, “General Delivery” to the nearest post office? At this point, all I can do is go in tomorrow and find out what kind of hours I’ll be given and how soon I’ll be starting. Whatever happens tomorrow determines my next move because if I can’t get a guaranteed 40 hours a week, I’ll be spending more money than I’ll make because this job, only pays once a month. Without an immediate safety net or support network that works with where I’m at, all I’m doing is going around in circles.

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A homeless mother’s day so far….

Posted by Carey Fuller in Homelessness - (2 Comments)
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This morning I managed to get Maggie up and dressed in time to get to a job orientation/training that I thought started at 9:00 am. Turned out it was actually 9:30 and I got there an hour early! I spent 5 hours watching job orientation and training videos without a break but I figure it’s worth it and a good sign I’ll be hired. While at the orientation, I got a desperate voicemail from Amanda, a 19 year old homeless mother who called me from the motel she was staying at because she has no cell phone. She said she called every place she could think of for shelter resources but had no luck. She then asked if I knew of some place she could put her 2 year old’s stuff if they ended up outside tonight. I checked my account and there is only $7 in there and my food stamps don’t reload until tomorrow. By the time I get out of this orientation and get to Kent, I have no idea where Amanda will be exactly since she has no cell phone and I have a quarter of a tank of gas left. I didn’t eat today and thanks to school meals, Maggie had breakfast and lunch.

If I’m lucky there might be some fast food gift cards at my mailbox I thought, so I drove to my new private mail box only to find an empty office suite with a sheet of paper taped to the glass saying everyone’s mail had been forwarded to the post office and thanks for 18 years of business! For a homeless person, this is major road block. I just got this mail box and had paid a year up front for it after the mail box I had in Federal Way closed down. It took over a month to come up with $150 to pay for that year in advance plus somebody to sponsor me a residential address to use because if you don’t have a residential address to put down, you can’t get a p.o. box! You have to have something sent to the residential address so that you can take that piece of mail to the p.o. box to show you have an address before they approve you for a p.o. box. The reason I use a private mail box is because when people send me packages via UPS or FedEx, they won’t send to a regular p.o. box because somebody often has to sign for the delivery.

Not having any kind of address is a major barrier for homeless people, now that mine has been taken away, what’s gonna happen when I try to apply for more jobs? I can’t leave the address section on a job application blank! Speaking of jobs, the orientation instructor said the hiring manager wanted me to call her back to see if I can come back in on Friday so they could talk about setting me up with a client so I’m thinking this means I’m hired but….and oh it’s a heavy but….now that it’s the beginning of a new month, my cell phone carrier is sending me messages to pay the monthly fee I don’t have. If you think not having an address is bad, not having a phone is worse and the race is on! I only have until the fifth before the phone goes offline….

I managed to do one load of laundry yesterday which consisted of our coats and a couple of outfits for Maggie because that’s all the money I could spare since the bulk of what I had went into the gas tank. That means we have one more day of clean laundry left. Thanks to Shaun King and Hope Mob, we have a hotel room to stay in for a week because normally right about this time, I get Maggie from school and depending on how much gas I have, we will wait for sunset at either Fred Meyer’s, McDonald’s, the library or simply in a crowded parking lot at a shopping mall or mega store. Once it’s dark and again this all depends on how much gas we have, we will drive to a rest stop for the night, or find a quiet street without a lot of traffic to spend the night. If I end up sleeping on a street, I have to take short naps or hide behind an abandoned building or foreclosed house so the cops don’t see us and try to move us out of the area.

When I got to Maggie’s school, she was sitting at a desk drinking from a carton of milk and eating a cherry turnover with the rest of her classmates. The school has these snacks thanks to the fantastic efforts put out by the Auburn Food Bank. When Maggie saw me standing in the doorway, she smiled then got a funny look on her face.  She got up from her desk and went to the snack table and brought me a carton of milk and one of the turnovers and said “Happy Birthday Mommy. I know it’s not much but I wanted you to have something.” Maggie saw her teacher and asked if it was ok to give me what she had in her hands and the teacher smiled and nodded. I had been so busy running around, I forgot what day it is today but…to be honest…I lost interest in my birthday a long time ago.

On the way back to the motel, I almost instinctively started to head towards the rest stop for the night. Usually when we get there, Maggie and I have a nightly ritual we follow that sounds like this:

“Ok Maggie, time to get in the backseat and get in your sleeping bag.” I lean back and look into the rearview mirror to see if she’s getting ready to go to “bed”. Once she’s settled into her sleeping she usually asks me to read her a story or turn on the radio to her favorite classical music station. Once she starts yawning she will say “Goodnight Mommy, I love you.” I reply “Good night Maggie, I love you too. See you in the morning!” Maggie will smile in the dark and say “See you in the morning.”

Depending on whether or not I have insomnia that night, I will fall asleep not long after Maggie does. Tonight we will be spending the night indoors at a different location only this time, our nightly ritual will include me snuggling with Maggie on a hotel bed as she falls asleep in my arms.

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