Thursday, July 01, 1999
Homeless have young faces
BY MARK CURNUTTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
For much of the past year, Cassie Persinger, her three children and their father lived week to week in local hotels, most recently the Armada Inn in Roselawn. Then their money ran out.
A nearby shelter for homeless families, Chabad House, paid for two nights' lodging for them at the Armada before making room for them last week. Home is now Room 2 — two sets of bunk beds, a crib, TV, two chests of drawers — in an emergency shelter.
Ms. Persinger and her chil dren are the new face of homelessness in the United States, according to a report released Wednesday that is based on a six-year federal study of homeless families.
The number of homeless unmarried mothers with young children was negligible 15 years ago. Today, they account for nearly 40 percent of the country's homeless population, according to the report, “Homeless Children: America's New Outcasts,” published by the Better Homes Fund. It is a Massachusetts-based advocacy group for homeless families established in 1988 by Better Homes and Gardens magazine.
More than 1 million chil dren are homeless each night in the United States, the most since the Depression, the report says.
“We're trying to save enough money to rent a house,” said Ms. Persinger, 21, who is pregnant with her fourth child. Her children's father works 12 hours a day selling used cars, gets paid on commission and lives with his family at Chabad House, one of the few shelters that allow men to stay.
“As soon as we get caught up, something brings us right
back down,” is how Ms. Persinger describes their life. “It's one heartache after another.”
Increasing numbers of children and single women are homeless in the Tristate, say shelter staff and Donald Whitehead, director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. The average age of a homeless person nationally is 9.
The coalition recently completed its 1998 analysis of shelter-bed availability and usage in Hamilton County and found a shortage of more than 1,200 beds for women and their children. There are now 702.
“The report is no surprise at all,” Mr. Whitehead said. “We've been seeing this coming on for a few years.”
He and other local homeless advocates fear a further increase in October when welfare benefits begin expiring for some female recipients with children.
The report defines homelessness as residing in a place that is uninhabitable, such as in a car or under a bridge, living where there is no fixed address or having no permanent residence.
Chabad House, one of eight homeless shelters serving women and children in Cincinnati, has 40 beds. Its typical client is a single woman with three children. There is a waiting list of 271 people, many of whom are now living temporarily with relatives or friends.
“But these are not four-bedroom houses these people are living in. They're three-room apartments. There's a lot of tension,” said Linda Young, executive director of Welcome House, which operates four programs for the homeless in Covington. “The people who come to us have exhausted every possibility.”
Welcome House has 35 beds for women and children. It has no vacancies and a long waiting list.
“It's primarily women and children and women with mental illness,” Ms. Young said.
The spike in homeless women and children has come about because of the lack of livable-wage jobs, the loss of affordable housing, welfare reform and the increase in the number of female-headed households — 79 percent of whom receive no money from family, friends or partners, including their children's father or fathers. Mr. Persinger is an exception.
The study also reports that half of the homeless children are under age 6 and that they suffer physically and emotionally from the experience.
“Many of these children are in horrible shape by the time they start school,” said Dr. Ellen Bassuk, president and co-founder of the Better Homes Fund.
Children who are homeless have higher rates of fever, stomach problems, asthma and ear infection. A quarter of homeless children have never visited a dentist. A third of homeless children are forced to skip meals and are not fully immunized against preventable diseases.
Once children who have been or are homeless start school, they suffer higher rates of mental illness; almost half of the 400,000 homeless children served by the nation's public schools last year exhibit signs of depression, anxiety or withdrawal, according to the report.
“You wonder if kids, no matter how resilient they are, are going to make it,” said Dr. Bassuk, a physician and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School.
At Chabad House on Wednesday morning, Ms. Persinger — who is a few weeks' pregnant — talked with a nurse from the Health Care for the Homeless Program, which is run by the Cincinnati Health Department and visits shelters weekly. She will receive prenatal vitamins. Her oldest daughter, who's 3, will get caught up on her shots. Her two other children, an 18-month-old daughter and a 4-year-old son, are fully immunized.
“The kids are healthy,” she said. “But since we've been here, they've had colds.”
Her 18-month-old needs surgery to correct a clubfoot condition, but Ms. Persinger said she and the girl's father can't afford the care.
She also says they don't have the money to acquire the children's birth certificates and haven't gotten them Social Security numbers, which prevents their father from claiming them as an income-tax deduction.
She sits at a table in the shelter dining room. Her daughters snack on freezer pops given to the children by shelter staff. Her son is upset that another child is playing with one of his Batman dolls. He asks his mother whether he can go back to the room to get his Joker doll.
“OK, but hurry, you're not supposed to be in the hallway,” she said.
Another mother chases after her 5-year-old daughter, who just learned she will receive a shot so she can start school in the fall.
In the corner of the dining room, LaKesha Cheatham, 22, talks with her two children — a son, 4, and a daughter, 2, — who have different fathers. She receives no financial support.
Later, she said: “The hardest part is looking for an apartment. It's hard being here and having another adult tell you what to do. You eat when they say. You go to bed when they say.”
She begins to cry. Her daughter, sitting on her mother's lap, reaches up and tries to wipe the tears from her mother's cheek.
Other children staying in Chabad House were picked up by a bus at 8:30 a.m. and taken to Washburn Elementary in the West End, where Cincinnati Public Schools offers a summer education program for homeless children.
The day camp runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. five days a week and includes a reading class, group activities and field trips. Today, some 50 school-age children, who are staying in any of 10 area family shelters, will go on a BB Riverboat cruise.
The Project Connect Homeless Education Program operates year-round, said director Debbie Reinhart. She expects that more than 1,700 homeless children will be served in the next year, receiving tutoring, transportation, nutrition and other services during the academic year.
“We reach as many kids as we have funding,” said Ms. Reinhart, a lead teacher in CPS. Money comes from federal sources and the city of Cincinnati, she said. “These kids are traditionally a couple of years behind in school.”
School is a topic of discussion back at Chabad House. Ms. Persinger asked that her children's names not be used and that their identities be shielded in a photograph.
“My son has to start school in a year,” she said.
Her son returned with his Joker doll and walked into his mother's hug.
“Mommy,” the boy said, “when do we get to go home?”
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