July 12, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Volunteer for homeless becomes homeless herself
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

Part two of a two-part series Click Here for Part 1

Kate, whose name has been changed for this article, knows all too well the results of wearing out a welcome.

Less than two years ago, Kate found herself and two daughters, now 14 and 18, without a home. Her sister, who owned the apartment they rented, needed to raise the monthly rent from $500 to $800-900 to afford her growing family.

After living in the apartment for six years, Kate had only 30 days to find a new, affordable place.

“It was all so fast,” she said.

Making only $22,000 a year as a teacher at a local daycare center, Kate could not afford the increased rent. And another job has been out of the question for years.

Kate’s job, which she has held for 13 years, has the flexibility she needs to raise her children and take her oldest daughter to the doctor and hospital when necessary.

Though she lives a normal life, her daughter, since birth, has suffered from both asthma and short bowel syndrome. The latter means that her small intestines are only four centimeters, so the food does not process correctly, and she misses a lot of the nutrients extracted from the food she eats.

With no savings, no credit and little time, Kate was unable to find housing. She turned to the Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network (NPIHN), which previous to this disaster she had been a volunteer for.

“I didn’t feel embarrassed” she said, referring to the switch from volunteer to family using the program. “I just wanted a home for me and my children.”

Traveling between the churches, she kept her larger belongings in storage for $200 a month, which wasn’t helping her save money.

But Kate said the hardest thing was not moving itself, but returning to a church for a second, or third, two-week stay. She kept telling the volunteers she wouldn’t be back because she had homes lined up. But three times, the home she had found fell through, and her expected stay of one month turned into 14 months. 

NPIHN helps parents find affordable housing, but much of the work is done by the individual.

“It’s an environment where people can work, go to school, where a parent can still be a parent,” said Rachel Falkove NPIHN executive director. “The idea is that the family members here should have some control over their lives.”

The first of Kate’s dead ends was a house provided by the Philadelphia Housing Authority. For two months she was promised residence and was even given a move-in date, but just before the move her application was rejected because of an unpaid gas bill.

Another house was promised her in Germantown, but the owners kept delaying her move, saying they were hitting snags in the home’s repair and painting. Finally the owners informed her they were doing a credit check — which she said was not part of the initial communication. With no credit, she was not given the chance to rent the place.

Finally, she found another home in Germantown, and since three days before Christmas, she and her two daughters have lived there without a problem.

Kate said in the midst of trying to find a home and hitting dead ends, she was so grateful to have NPIHN’s help. They enabled her and her children to stay temporarily in various church facilities.

“I couldn’t imagine having to live in a shelter. I would rather move church to church than live in a housing unit,” Kate said of NPIHN. “They are a lifesaver, really.”

Since moving into the home, Kate has been concentrating on helping her daughter with her asthma, which worsened during the 14 months they were without a steady home. But she also managed to help her enter college, which she started this fall.

Kate also has a second job, cleaning homes locally, but she said she has not yet been able to save a cushion of money so that if something happened again, she will likely be in the same place she was only a few months ago.

Falkove pointed out that the program is not just about providing a physical shelter, but support in such a needy time for these families. They offer a mix of programs from a day-time center that provides fax machine, computer, telephone and more to help in searching for jobs, life skills and education workshops, mentors, counseling and more.

“We just have people living with such uncertainty,” she said. “It’s not an issue of giving people affordable housing, it’s so much more.”

She said there is such a need for this type of program, but because many of these families are not sitting out on corners with their hand out, they are overlooked.

“We’re in a tough time, and it’s really challenging,” Falkove said. “These families are finding themselves at the end of the food chain for national service.”

The People’s Emergency Center and 16 other agencies that serve homeless families are hoping the mayor’s race can serve as a vehicle to raise awareness of these families’ needs and attain funding to help them. The Family Service Provider Network of Philadelphia set a “four-point policy brief” to candidates last month, “challenging mayoral hopefuls to produce policy solutions for our city’s homeless families.”

Specifically, the network is hoping that part of the Housing Trust Fund can be directed toward homeless families and used to improve social services and increase the number of low-rent residences.

“I’d like to multiply this program 30 times over,” Falkove said. “We like to do things quietly here … there are hundreds and hundreds of people in this community who care about their neighbors, but we need to find a Northwest way of helping homeless in our way.”

Mt. Airy activist Eric Wilden, who portrayed a homeless person on the streets, said he did learn that to create genuine change, he cannot approach problems from his own perspective.

“So many social service programs offer temporary solutions and band aid fixes,” he said. “I need to be able to listen to the people I’m helping” and base actions on what they need, not what he thinks they need.