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40 Homeless For The Holidays

Homeless for the Holidays:

Many Americans Out in

the Cold

NBC News

Some kids don’t want iPads, Xboxes or Frozen
dolls for Christmas: They just want a place to
call home.
New data point to a troubling rise in
homelessness among America’s poor families,
which means more kids will be figuratively —
and sometimes literally — left out in the cold
this holiday season.
“For kids, safety comes from
predictability. They need routine in their lives,”
said Carmela DeCandia, director of the National
Center on Family Homelessness, which
published a report last month finding that 2.5
million kids — one in 30 — were homeless at
some point last year.
“They’re in that constant state of
trauma,” said Dan Fuller, vice president of
legislative relations at nonprofit group
Communities in Schools. say, and a big reason this epidemic hides in plain staying in a single room with a friend of Vest’s
This takes its toll on kids’ physical and sight. Three-quarters of homeless kids start out — kids on a bunk bed, Vest on a sofa.
mental health. on a friend’s or relative’s extra bedroom, couch Even with an administrative job, her
or floor, although these Good Samaritans are income wasn’t enough to pull the family back
Senquasha Parks often poor themselves and have little extra to from the financial brink. “For the past five or six
offer. “Families often split up [and] it’s not years around Christmastime, we’ve been
uncommon for an entire family to have to share somewhere else,” Vest said. “I worked full-time
By the time she was 13, Senquaesha Parks had
one room,” DeCandia said. every day and it just was not enough,” she said.
developed digestive difficulties and high blood
Most homeless families are headed by This year, with the help of nonprofit
pressure after years of homelessness. “All that
single moms, and around 40 percent of this group HomeStretch, a group that works with
stress and pressure built up,” she said.
population lives below the poverty line. Since homeless families, Vest and her family, which
“Honestly, sometimes I felt like I had no
the recession, the income gap has widened, now includes a month-old baby boy and the
purpose, like I had no business being alive.”
Today, 18-year-old Parks is a freshman leaving many poor families worse off, even as infant’s father — also her daughter’s father —
public assistance has been pared back. have moved into a new home. The two older
at Georgia State University in Atlanta, after
Last year, the National Low Income kids are excited about decorating for Christmas
counselors and caseworkers at Communities in
Housing Coalition found there was not a single — and having their own bedrooms.
Schools intervened and provided support to help
state in which a person working a full-time job “He always loved to kick his sister out,”
the honors student make it through her senior
at minimum wage could afford to rent a two- Vest said of her son. “Now he can say to her,
year. But for every story like Parks’, experts say
bedroom apartment. Even this many years after ‘Get out of my room.’”
there are many homeless kids who just slip
the foreclosure crisis, experts say there’s an Parks is also looking forward to a
through the cracks.
unmet need for affordable rental housing. merrier Christmas this year. She plans to go
“The key thing is this is vastly
underreported,” Fuller said. “There’s a stigma "It’s the lower-cost rental housing back to her aunt’s house over the holidays, but
product out there that’s being most impacted in coming back to school after the winter break
attached to this.” Families also often want to
the current economy,” said Tom Deyo, national will be her homecoming.
hide homelessness because it can mean that
spokesman for NeighborWorks America, a Parks cherishes the one Christmas
they’re no longer in their kids’ school district,
group that supports affordable housing present she got last year, a handmade quilt in her
creating more upheaval and threatening their
organizations around the country. The supply of school colors. It came to college with her, a
academic performance.
affordable rentals is shrinking as demand is reminder of the transience she has finally left
This was the case for Parks. “It felt like I
rising, pushing rents out of reach of poor behind. “My dorm is my home now,” she said.
had to stay quiet about my living situation or
families. “It’s something I can call my own.” []
how things were going,” she said. She
shouldered her emotional burden largely alone Domestic violence also can be a culprit.
Women may leave an abuser but then have
because she worried that she would lose her
nowhere to go. As many as half of America’s
Advanced Placement credits if administrators
homeless women say domestic violence has
found out where she was living and made her
forced them onto the street.
switch schools.
But sometimes these stories do make
Carmen Vest
their way to the surface. One afternoon, when
Parks missed the last bus and started the long
walk home, another student offered her a ride. When Virginia resident Carmen Vest was
On that drive, the two girls learned they had attacked and abducted at her workplace by a
former romantic partner last December, the 34-
much more in common than either of them could
have imagined. year-old fled, leaving everything behind. “I was
“It turns out she’s going through the in a safe house for a couple of months,” she said.
same thing… living with her grandmother,” “We were living in hotels and couch-surfing.”
Parks said. “I never thought somebody with a Last Christmas, her 13-year-old son was
car, another honors student, was going through living with a friend from school and her 6-year-
the same thing.” old daughter was living with her father. Before
This is the most common pattern, experts Vest’s assault, the three of them had been