Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303190064
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RANDY UDAVCAK SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THEY FELL THROUGH THE CRACKS
THE ORDEAL of being homeless can be understood only if you've experienced it. This family wants everyone to know the emotional trauma, but they want to keep their real names out of the paper to protect their children who are enrolled in public schools.As Allen and Linda relax in front of the television in their four-bedroom Blacksburg apartment, the sounds of their three children and the family dog echofrom down the hall in a kind of domestic medley.
Last summer, however, the family numbered among Montgomery County's unseen homeless, plying between shelters and living from one day to the next on whatever food they could find.
While the family's tale of hardship, humiliation and fear shows the sobering consequences of homelessness in the New River Valley, they say their ultimate success is testimony to the good will and generosity of the people who live here.
"It was people that have helped us," Linda said, "not agencies."
Originally from Giles County, the couple sometimes had worked as volunteers helping the homeless at a local soup kitchen. They never dreamed that one day they would share the plight of the people they were helping.
For two years, Allen, a chef, bounced from one part-time job to another in Pembroke while his wife held a minimum-wage job there. When money was tight, they somehow managed to make ends meet. But when Linda developed pneumonia and lost her job, those ends unraveled.
The family was evicted from the house they were renting and had nowhere to turn.
Members of their church in Pembroke put the family up at motels for a few days until they found a house to move into, but as their savings ran out they soon were forced to leave there, too.
Their minister put them up in the church for a week and a half and then the family moved into a shelter in Giles County.
When Linda went to see about getting other kinds of help in Giles County, she said, she became concerned about what might happen if her children wound up in foster care.
She was worried about how the children, ages 15, 12 and 10 (their oldest daughter, 19, no longer lives with them) would be affected psychologically, and whether they would be split up among different homes.
Another concern was that some welfare programs provide aid only to women whose husbands have left them.
Officials at the Department of Social Services in Giles deny that they would present such options to an applicant. Director Lynda Boggs says Giles was a pilot county for a new program that provides aid for unemployed parents regardless of marital status.
Linda was left feeling that the final indignity in being homeless was that there was no final indignity.
Shelter space is only temporary, and the family would have to leave at the end of the week. Allen made plans with his brother in South Carolina to move the family there.
Just as they were about to go, the family got a glimmer of hope: Allen was asked to interview for a job at Virginia Tech.
Because he was told that a decision would be made within three days, he and Linda decided to chance it on the hope of a brighter future, although by now they were destitute.
Allen was hired, but the family faced another major obstacle: He wouldn't start work for a week, and he wouldn't draw his first paycheck until a week after that.
Because they no longer could stay in the Giles shelter, the family contacted New River Community Action Inc. Funds administered by Montgomery County Community Shelter paid for a week in a Blacksburg motel. The manager of the motel allowed them to stay for a second week.
"That first week we kind of muddled through," Linda said. Some members of their church in Pembroke sent them money to help with food, but the couple said that only went so far, and they had to find other sources of help.
Linda talked to a woman at the Montgomery County Social Services office in Christiansburg about food stamps.
"She said, `Well, you're going to have to come in.' And I told her, I said, `Ma'am, I don't have the money to ride the bus.' And she said "Well, it's only 50 cents," and I said `Well, you might as well tell me it's only a dollar, because 50 cents to me is the same as a dollar would be, or even coming up with a penny. And she said, `Well, if you need the help you're going to have to come in.' "
And so she did, walking from her Blacksburg motel with the children in tow to the Social Services office in Christiansburg - about eight miles, with temperatures in the 80s.
But Linda says the trip wasn't the only ordeal. She recalls the humiliation she felt talking to Social Service officials.
"After I told them the situation we were in, their attitude changed. They looked at me like I was subhuman or something. It's like a screen comes down in front of them, and you're something less than human. . . . Even after walking there and telling my story they were not going to give me any assistance whatsoever until I fought for those food stamps for the children.
"When I went to get those food stamps on Monday, they said, `OK, we've got your story. Come back Thursday and we'll give you another interview then and we'll see if we can give you the food stamps,' " she said.
"And I told them, `Ma'am, I've just told you, I don't have any money, and I have three children who have not eaten this morning, and you're telling me I have to wait until Thursday.'
"And she said, `I'm sorry but there's nothing we can do.'
"She went and got her supervisor, and I had to tell my story again. . . . She said, `Obviously something does need to be done, but I don't know what to tell you.' And so she went and got another man, and I had to repeat my story again for him."
Finally, after more arguing, explaining and pleading, Linda received $192 worth of food stamps.
"If I would have just taken their first answer, we would have had nothing, but because I argued with them, I walked out of there getting help," she recalls with frustration in her voice. "But I had to argue to get it."
According to Caroline Crist, eligibility supervisor for the Montgomery County Office of Social Services, department employees are given guidelines for identifying cases that require urgent attention, but they have no explicit directions to respond immediately once such a case is determined.
"That's just human nature, I hope," Crist said.
But the stamps were by no means an ideal solution to feeding a family in a motel room.
"In a place like that you don't have anything that you can cook on, and you don't have any refrigeration . . . so you have to buy products that are prepared," Linda said.
"One hundred and ninety-two dollars sounds like a lot of money," she added, but it wouldn't stretch far buying three meals a day of prepared food.
To keep milk for the children, they had to use food stamps to buy ice for a small cooler. Even so, they had to buy small containers.
Other aspects of caring for a family also were next to impossible in the motel. "Somebody brought me washing powder, which was great because I didn't have any," Linda said. "But I didn't have anywhere to wash clothes."
But the physical difficulties often were more bearable than the emotional demands, especially those on the children, Linda said.
"Of course, you can't hide everything from them," she said, "But you try to put on a front to them that `it's gonna be OK, we're gonna make it.'
"And it gets hard day after day trying to keep that front up when all you feel like doing is sitting there and crying your eyes out, and saying `No more!' "
It was during these times that Linda and her husband weighed particularly difficult questions - even wondering whether they were hurting their children by keeping them with them rather than putting them in temporary foster care.
"A lot of the time I would go without eating and my husband would go without eating to make sure the children got enough," Linda said.
After Allen's paychecks began, the family moved into an apartment in Blacksburg.
"We're getting back on our feet and slowly moving away from the edge," said Linda. "But . . . it wouldn't take much to push us off."
Now that they have some measure of security, Allen and Linda are more committed than ever to helping others who are homeless.
"When we moved in and started to get our own stuff around us, I couldn't relax," Linda said. "I felt, well, if it happened to us, it could happen to somebody else."
From their experience, Allen and Linda say they firmly believe that a major barrier to helping the homeless is changing perceptions.
"Most people, when they think of the homeless, the first thing that comes to mind is a bum, a wino who just drinks and doesn't care about anything else," Allen said. "But there are a lot of families. There are a lot of circumstances that make it happen, small things that add up to the big thing that makes it happen."
And once a family becomes homeless, he adds, the system makes it hard to reverse the trend because it only provides enough help to tide over a family through an emergency.
"There's nothing to help you get back on your feet again."
While the couple had praise for efforts such as those by church groups, they say such efforts end with the donation.
"Nobody ever actually goes back and checks whether the money is doing any good," Allen said.
Linda regularly returns to the motel where her family had lived, which she says at the time was lodging three to four homeless families per week through an agreement with the Community Action Center in Christiansburg.
She said many of the families were reluctant to talk until they found out she was in the same situation.
"It's like a dam opening up, because you feel so alone. I've cried with a lot of families."
Besides giving moral support, she also has tried to help families with their needs.
Recently, she collected money from churches to buy supplies such as diapers and formula for one family with young children.
In these efforts, she says most people are willing to help, but are unaware the problem exists, and unsure of what they can do.
Part of the reason people don't know about the problem of homeless families is because such families intentionally keep their problems to themselves, Linda said.
"They say they're ashamed to tell anybody because of the reactions they get from people. And you do feel ashamed. You feel like you've let the children down. Like you've let each other down.
"There is no feeling like being homeless and not being able to talk to somebody and share how you're feeling: the hurt, the anger. You've got so many different emotions."
Little by little, Allen and Linda's modest apartment is becoming a home, with a few family pictures on the table by their well-worn couch, and their eldest son's high-school football certificate displayed on the other side of the room.
But the painful memories of having nowhere to call home are still all too real.
"It was very frightening," Linda said, holding back tears. "We don't ever want to go through it again. . . ."
"And we won't," Allen said.
HOW TO HELP: Many people want to help the homeless, but do not know where to volunteer their services or send a donation. Here are some agencies you may contact:\ Blacksburg and\ Christiansburg clothing banks: 382-6186\ Coalition for the Homeless: 231-3734\ Free Clinic of New River Valley: 382-6186\ Interfaith Food Pantry: 382-6186\ Montgomery County Community Shelter: 382-8621\ Montgomery County Emergency Assistance Program: 382-6186\ Radford Clothing Bank: 639-6447\ Radford-Fairlawn Daily Bread: 639-6019 or 731-1040\ Voluntary Action Center: 552-4909\ Women's Resource Center: 639-9592