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by Gina Hamilton
Coastal Journal staff
BRUNSWICK — It started out as a simple story about a family who fell through the gaping holes in the safety net of social services designed to keep people from living on the street, but as soon as I saw Christina’s two teen daughters, Mary and Leann, sobbing as they pushed two shopping carts filled with the remnants of their worldly possessions in the rain on Saturday morning, I realized it was going to be something more than that.
This is a human drama. There are no heroes and villians, but there are a lot of decent human beings who tried to do the best they could with the few resources available to them to help this family, and a lot of probably otherwise decent human beings who, for whatever reason, turned out to be missing in action this past weekend.
Above all, it is a story about how the social safety net in the midcoast, and throughout the state, is woefully inadequate and unresponsive to the present and growing needs of its people.
Christina is a 44 year old woman who is disabled. She has asthma, another respiratory disorder, and epilepsy. Over the last two months, she’s had at least 20 seizures, even though she’s been on medication for the condition. The medication doesn’t work as well if meals are few and far between, and stress can also trigger the seizures. She had a seizure while she was talking to me, in fact, and was taken by ambulance to Mid Coast Hospital.
Christina’s daughter Mary is 19, with a vulnerable air that belies her chronological age. She appears to be chronically underfed, and most of her clothing was lost during the family’s recent eviction and attempt to live in a tent in Georgetown.
The other daughter, Leann, is 17, and expecting a baby on July 2. She and her boyfriend Anthony married a few days ago so that the infant would be born to a married couple. They have a few baby items, but otherwise have only the clothes on their backs.
The family also had a dog and a cat, but the animals, at least, have been farmed out to friends.
The problem began when Christina’s daughters decided to go to Montana to see Leann’s father, who had not been supporting her. He left when Leann was two years old, and left the family destitute. Mary’s father has also been evading child support her whole life.
Christina had been in a supportive apartment at that point, for families living with disabled members. When the girls left, however, she lost the family unit, and was moved to a single adult unit. In Montana, meanwhile, the girls were rebuffed by their father and stepfather, and were living on the street. They returned to Maine with boyfriends in tow - Anthony and Mary’s boyfriend who did not remain in the picture - and bunked in with Christina, in her small apartment.
While it appeared that the kids were visiting, Coastal Economic Development tolerated the situation, but eventually, they told Christina she’d have to move or that the kids would have to move out. Christina took an apartment where they could all live together, but the loss of a couple of jobs and Leann’s advancing pregnancy meant that her small disability payments - less than $700 per month - was the family’s sole income.
They were unable to pay the rent, and were evicted in May.
From there they tried to camp out in Georgetown, but Christina’s multiple disabilities caught up with her, and she was hospitalized in June. The kids were moved to the nearby Rodeway Inn while she was in the hospital, and since the hospital wouldn’t discharge her back to the campground, they paid for another few nights after she was released.
D-Day arrived on Saturday, when the family couldn’t beg or borrow enough money to stay in the motel any longer. They thought they’d try to camp out at the Wal-Mart parking lot (Wal-Mart allows recreational vehicles to park in its lot overnight, although tents were never part of the plan).
I got the call on Saturday morning from Betty King, whose husband Sean is part of the Good Sam Ministry at the United Church of Christ in Bath. She was hoping that a story in our paper might alert people to the impending crisis in the region. The Good Sam Ministry has helped people in crisis to the tune of $28,800 last year; however, there is never more than about $400 in the checking account at any given time. When Christina’s family needed help, they helped, but soon ran out of funds.
I invited Christina and her daughters out for a cup of coffee to get them out of the rain while we talked. It turned out there was no room at any family shelter in the state. Christina said she would have trouble getting into an apartment these days, because she’d recently been evicted and her credit history was not good. If she could find an apartment, the Salvation Army would help with a deposit, and the City of Bath would help with the first month’s rent. But finding a place she could afford on her meagre income, even assuming that one of the kids could get a job within walking distance (no one in the family has a car or a driving license) has proved virtually impossible.
During the conversation, I called all of my own contacts. Greg McDonald of the Bath Holiday Inn, moved by the family’s plight, offered a room on Sunday. He was full on Saturday night. Although his agency could not help, Andrew from the Midcoast Chapter of the American Red Cross spent his Saturday tracking down leads for shelter space and possible telephone numbers to call. Betty and Sean King came to the coffee shop and tried to work through their lists to see if they could find anyone willing to help. Daniel Leeman of the Beth Israel congregation in Bath later came to see if he couldn’t help the family figure out how to work through the issues they are facing together. Marga Huntington of Midcoast Shares looked into her resources. Having no room at the Inn herself, Elizabeth Knowlton knocked on doors on Washington Street trying to find shelter for the night and on a more permanent basis. A patron seated nearby, who works for Department of Health and Human Services, gave Christina her card and offered some suggestions. We called every agency that purported to have a 24-hour hotline number. At nearly all of them, there was no answer.
And then Christina had a seizure.
The ambulance came and took her to Mid Coast Hospital, where she was treated for epilepsy - Christina had not eaten at all that day, so she had not taken her medication. However, even at the hospital, there was no room at the inn, and Christina was discharged. The hospital did accomplish what we had been unable to do - it found a single adult space at the Tedford Shelter in Brunswick for Christina, and a space for Leann at a teen shelter in Portland.
Getting Leann into shelter was crucial; if she were to have her child without adequate housing, she would temporarily lose her newborn to foster care.
I took the family to get some lunch after Christina’s release, and then we took her to Tedford. The intake worker was very kind, supportive, and optimistic. Leann was on her way to Portland, and I took Mary to my home for the night.
After a filling supper, a hot shower, a pair of donated pjs and a quiet room to herself for the night, Mary woke up better able to face the situation. But her family was still far-flung, there is no guarantee that her sister will be able to bring her newborn son home in a week or so, and Mary herself has no permanent - or even temporary - solution to her own homelessness.
The only emergency family shelter in the lower midcoast is the Tedford Shelter, which can only serve six families at a time at the Federal Street site. Once Christina is processed through Tedford, there are other options that may include just her or the whole family, including the Evergreen Woods supportive housing program in Bath. There is also an outreach program for homeless or at-risk youth, called the Merrymeeting Project that might be able to help the young people in some way. There are no youth shelters in the midcoast at all. And there are only four emergency beds for homeless women.
Bruce at Tedford Housing explained what the process for the family will be from here. To get into housing, Christina’s family will first have to secure some form of subsidy, no matter where they go. Christina will have a counselor who will help her apply for the possible rent subsidies.
For the Evergreen Woods program, for instance, a person fills out an application, goes through a screening process, is found eligible, and in Christina’s case, must have a voucher or be able to pay full-market rent rates. There is also going to be a question about whether there is room at the inn there, too. People who apply and are accepted are put on waiting lists. “Currently, we have about four or five people waiting to get into Evergreen Woods,” Bruce said. Because the state’s goal is fewer emergency shelter nights (the goal is getting people into permanent housing) there is less support from the state for emergency shelters than previously.
That’s right, less support, not more, in an era when unemployment and homelessness is on the rise.
What will ultimately happen to Christina, her daughters, her son-in-law, and her grandson will depend in large measure on Tedford’s caseworker being able to cut through red tape and get help for the family with permanent housing.
Mary says that once she is somewhere permanent, it will be a lot easier for her to look for and keep a job to help the family. “I’m willing to do anything,” she said. “But the only transportation I have is my feet, so I have to have a place to live before I can legitimately tell an employer I can be there every day to work.”
And there’s the rub. The able-bodied members of the family can’t seek jobs until they have housing or reliable transportation, but without assistance, they won’t be able to get housing until they have jobs. And of course, jobs are hard to come by right now.
Christina’s family’s situation seems a little more optimistic today than it did on Saturday morning, but the midcoast - and the state - have a long way to go to solve Maine’s rising homeless problem. Perhaps step one is having a phone number that will be answered on the weekends.
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