Voices of the Homeless
- Steve Russo
- Nov 1, 2014
- 3 min read
Homeless awareness month and Family Promise of North Idaho. By Cindy Wood, Family Promise of North Idaho. Photos courtesy of North Idaho Family Promise.
I am scared, Mommy, it is so dark and there is no night light. I don’t like the thought of security telling us to move. You can only get so clean with a paper towel bath. Are my children going to be taken away? I don’t get homework because my teacher knows I’m homeless. We had to keep moving all the time; we could never settle. Potty trained? Where would this “training” take place? My kids just broke down and cried when I told them we were picking huckleberries AGAIN to buy gas. I left my work equipment with a friend; he had a party and now he doesn’t know where my tools are. We never recovered from having a premature baby. I fell behind in my rent. My wife liked partying better than parenting and she left. I was never legally adopted, and I don’t even know what state to get my birth certificate. I was cut back to seven hours a pay period. We have no diapers. I did some work on the house in exchange for rent, and then the landlord evicted us. I have to leave my kids where we camp on Fourth of July Pass to look for work. I was an independent contractor and I got injured.
Stories of heartbreak and hopelessness. These and more are the stories we hear when families come to Family Promise of North Idaho for help. They humble themselves for their children and ask what FPNI can do to help them. We listen, we assess, and if they qualify we take them into Family Promise of North Idaho. FPNI offers hospitality by way of individual family rooms, meals, and trained and caring hosts. Safety is offered for families in crisis. FPNI mobilizes congregations to provide overnight shelter for families with children on a weekly rotation through the year. The Day Center is located in the lower level of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Coeur d’Alene. Our offices are located there as well the family day center. This is where our families have a family friendly, safe working atmosphere to meet with our case manager and move forward seven days a week.
One of many voices of hope includes a hardworking family who came to us after being released from the hospital after having their second child. They had nowhere to go. Mom was let go at her job during her maternity leave, and Dad’s hours were reduced at his job.
“Family Promise took us in, and we learned that to be stable we needed to keep our jobs and stay in one place for more than six months. We have been in our apartment for two years now. The kids have childcare, and we learned some parenting skills. Just yelling at the kids doesn’t help. They need our attention. We have a working vehicle, jobs, and I am at a place where I can further my education. Our family can now look to the future instead of living day by day.”
When someone calls Family Promise of North Idaho a shelter – we hear our families: parents and children correct them and say, “This is not a shelter. This is our home!”
Komentarze