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By Kristin Harmel
Photography by Betsy Hansen
Just a few years ago, life for Christina and Hannon Queen was going well. They were living in Charlotte, N.C. They had a successful beauty supply store and they owned a four-bedroom ranch house with a finished basement. Daughter Kimberly, now 12, got to go roller-skating whenever she wanted. Tyler, now 13, had an enviable collection of video games. Destiny, now 15, didn’t have to worry about whether her family could afford a $5.99 on-sale T-shirt at the mall.
Then Christina’s mother was diagnosed with liver cancer and she needed someone to help run her thrift store on 17-92 in Longwood. The economy crashed, the beauty supply store was failing and it seemed like a good time for the family to head south. So two years ago, the Queens moved down to Christina’s mother’s mobile home in Sanford, a situation that was meant to be temporary.
But the economic downturn soon forced the closure of Turnaround Thrift. Christina, 34, and Hannon, 43, couldn’t find other jobs. With Christina’s mother growing sicker by the day, staying in the mobile home was no longer an option. The home was falling apart. The halls were so stacked with boxes that there was hardly room to move and the kids had no place to sleep. Tyler had to make do with a La-Z-Boy recliner.
Then, in October, the family moved out when Christina’s mother needed Hospice care. With no jobs, bad credit and little in savings, Christina and Hannon found it impossible to lease an apartment, which requires a security deposit and verification of employment. So the Queens wound up in a cramped motel room at the Budget Inn in Sanford, which offers weekly rates and is home to several families who can’t afford alternate housing and who are one short step away from living on the streets.
Two weeks after moving in, with no jobs on the horizon and virtually no money left in their bank account, the situation was desperate. That’s when Christina met Beth Davalos, the coordinator of the Families in Transition program for the Seminole County Public School system.
“Me and my husband both, we have a lot of pride,” Christina says. “We don’t go and ask for help, which is why we’re not getting a welfare check. But I was getting the kids ready for school one day and Beth was outside seeing another family. She walked up and asked me if my kids went to school in Seminole County, which they do. She said they could help us.”
And that’s just what Davalos did. She used funds donated to Families in Transition to help pay for another week at the Budget Inn, which meant that the Queens wouldn’t have to go into a homeless shelter. And since shelters in Seminole County are both overcrowded and divided by gender, it also meant that – for a little while, at least -- all five family members could stay together.
“It’s a big relief,” Christina says. “Housing is our biggest worry.”
To Davalos, that makes perfect sense. When kids have to worry about where they’re staying, she explains, it affects their schoolwork. That’s why Families in Transition exists: to help families so that kids can stay on track without missing out on their youth and their education.
“Homelessness affects every area of life for children,” she says. “It affects them emotionally, physically, psychologically and socially. The more we can help children while they’re going through this difficult time, to make their lives as normalized as possible, the better. When we provide support for the parents, the children see they’re less anxious and worried. The kids can concentrate on their work without worrying about what’s going to happen the next day. And that’s what we’re doing with this family.”
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More than 1,100 children in Seminole County schools are homeless, Davalos says. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re living on the streets or in homeless shelters. Some, like the Queens, are living in motels. Others are sleeping in their cars. The majority are living with family or friends, which comes with its own set of worries for kids.
“It’s very uncomfortable to live with someone else,” Davalos explains. “It’s a very vulnerable place, because the children feel like they have to be perfect. They’re afraid of doing something wrong. They have more responsibility than they should, because they worry they’ll be the cause for someone kicking their family out.”
The problem appears to be growing. According to Pathways to Home, a local collaborative program set up to help families find affordable housing, the number of homeless children in Seminole County schools increased by more than 100 percent between the 2007-08 and 2009-10 school years.
“Because we’re in Central Florida, many jobs are in the service industry or construction,” Davalos explains. “A lot of our homeless families worked in those areas. They’re the first ones to lose that position and the last ones to get it back. Most are in need of a job. A lot of them don’t make enough money to reach the rent. We have families who cannot afford even the basics.”
Even parents who manage to secure some sort of job find that it’s not enough, Davalos says.
“The thing is that Seminole has one of the highest median incomes,” she explains. “To afford to live here, you have to earn over $21 an hour for your basic needs to be met. That’s for a single mother with two children. We have a lot of parents who are taking lower-level jobs than they had before, people who had decent positions at an office who are now working in fast-food restaurants earning minimum wage or a little more. But $10 an hour isn’t enough money to get self-sufficient.”
And so the problem multiplies. Many parents are working hard to provide for their families, but are caught in an exhausting and futile cycle and never seem to get ahead. For other families, like the Queens, the most they’ve been able to get is temporary day-labor jobs, which means that paychecks are meager and few.
“These families can barely afford to get their own place,” Davalos says. “And if one thing goes wrong, everything goes. It’s called vicarious living, because most of a person’s paycheck is going to rent. One bump is going to throw everything off and they’ll get evicted.”
And in such situations, it’s often kids who bear the bulk of the burden, both physically and psychologically. They worry about their families. They don’t sleep well. They’re concerned about how classmates will treat them. They can’t find time or space to focus on their schoolwork. That’s why Families in Transitions exists.
“We want to make sure they have access to what other children can access,” Davalos says. “We want to make sure they have school supplies and are ready to learn. We want to make sure they can go on field trips, play sports and do other things. We don’t want them to miss out on their childhood. There’s so much worry going on inside. We want them to feel supported by the community. The federal government helps provide the access to education and, with the support of the community, we’re helping them with everything else.”
In the case of the Queens, Families in Transition has helped Destiny stay enrolled at Winter Springs High School, where she’s a freshman. Kimberly, a sixth-grader, and Tyler, an eight-grader, have remained at Millenium Middle School.
“That helps with continuity,” Davalos explains.
The Families in Transition program was established in April 2003 through grant funding from the national McKinney-Vento Act, which provides for the educational needs of children considered homeless. The act provides for free transportation to and from children’s school of origin and requires schools to register children, even if they’re missing proof of residence or immunization records. School districts throughout the country are obligated to appoint local education liaisons to ensure that students’ needs are met. Here in Seminole County, a special grant provides funding for Davalos, who coordinates the county’s outreach and assistance programs through the school system.
“The McKinney-Vento Act might get them into the classroom, but kids worry that they won’t have a place to go home to,” Davalos explains. “We work with the community to provide them with food, clothing, school supplies and other basic needs.”
And that, for Davalos, is more than a full-time job. She works until 11 p.m. or midnight most nights and is often at work before the school day begins anew. Not only does she personally reach out to families, she also works with local non-profit groups, faith-based organizations and businesses. Through her efforts, and those of many dedicated volunteers and school employees, Seminole County schools have 45 food pantries that allow kids to take food home if their families need it. Families in Transition also works with Pathways to Home to find affordable housing so that families can stay together. Davalos coordinates with 19 local organizations to make sure families are getting the help they need without services being repeated. Many businesses, such as Sonny’s Real Pit Bar-B-Q, also are coming forward to donate money or other items or services to the cause. Davalos also works closely with the school system’s 16 social workers.
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On a recent sunny autumn afternoon in the parking lot of the Budget Inn, which sits on a gritty strip of road near State Road 417, 12-year-old Kimberly Queen is chattering away, her eyes wide and her words tumbling over each other. She’s just come from school and she’s excited about all the Halloween candy she still has from trick-or-treating with her new neighborhood friends. Although she’s somber about her grandmother’s terminal illness – the family is on its way to the hospital for a visit – she’s also preoccupied with the new issues of Tiger Beat and J-14 magazines. She’s hoping to see Justin Bieber in one of the publications, but points out, “He’s probably too old for me. Maybe he can date my big sister instead.”
In other words, she’s a normal preteen. Except she knows her parents are struggling to find work. She knows that they may not be able to afford their small room at the Budget Inn much longer. She had to sell her laptop to contribute to rent. She and her older sister and brother have to take turns sleeping on an inflatable cot on the floor because only four people can fit in the motel room’s two beds. And those teen magazines she’s excited about? Her parents may not be able to afford them.
“They’ve sacrificed a lot for kids their age,” says Christina. “And they’ve sacrificed without complaining. They’ve sold everything to help us financially. I used to look at other parents and think, ‘How can you take your kids’ prized possessions?’ But now I get it. It’s desperate. I remember a time when I thought my kids were spoiled. It’s amazing how they’ve adjusted. The kids, they keep their heads up for most things.”
When the family’s financial luck began to go downhill, a few family members, all of whom had financial difficulties of their own, chipped in to help. Hannon’s sister even offered to let the Queens’ oldest daughter, Kerrie, now 18, move in with them in the Charlotte area. She still lives there and is in community college studying for an associate’s degree in nursing. Christina’s extended family pitched in too, but now that her mother is in the hospital, there’s no more money left to help. It all goes to doctors and medicine.
So the Queens are on their own. Both Christina and Hannon are desperately looking for jobs – Christina has sales experience and Hannon was a skilled factory worker before they started their own business – but they’re coming up empty.
“We have lots of anxiety,” Hannon says. “It’s stressful. It’s terrible.”
Every morning, Hannon heads over to a local day-labor depot, where he puts his name in the system just after 5 a.m. and hopes that a job comes in.
“If they have a job for you, they send you out,” he says. “If they don’t, they don’t. I went the past couple days, to two different ones, and they didn’t have any jobs. You just sit around and look kind of crazy and hope they send you. Trying to get the kids to school in the morning with one broke van, it makes it harder for them to send you out because they’d prefer you had transportation instead of them hooking you up with a job and transportation. It makes it twice as hard.”
In fact, Hannon says, even if Christina didn’t need the family van to transport the kids and to visit her mother in the hospital, it’s unlikely he could rely on it to get to job sites. The family rarely takes the 1995 Nissan Quest, which belongs to Christina’s mother, out of Sanford because the transmission is slipping and it often doesn’t run.
“If you heard it, it sounds like the wheels are about to pop off of it,” Hannon says with a grimace.
Hannon has been sent out on a handful of one-day jobs. They don’t pay well, but they’re something.
“Our shop made $700-800 a day and half of that was profit,” Christina says. “But at the day-labor place, it’s just $7.35 an hour. They give you jobs that normally pay $15-20, but you’re on a day-to-day basis. So it’s just minimum wage. Even before we had the shop, my husband worked in a refinery and made $18 an hour. He hasn’t worked for minimum wage since he was 15. That hurt him in his heart. He did a demolition job the other day. He worked for 11 hours and it was only $64 after taxes. It’s awful.”
Hannon hangs his head when he talks about it.
“I should have stayed in college,” he says quietly. “I was stupid for quitting college. I started at Blue Ridge Community College in North Carolina. I was going to take business, but I quit. I was young and dumb. I think about that a lot these days.”
Still, the Queens haven’t asked for help. They’ve gratefully accepted Davalos’ offer to help them pay for the Budget Inn. They’re using state-funded food assistance to purchase meals, but they’ve refused clothing and food donations through Families in Transition and they haven’t applied for welfare.
“The economy’s so bad right now, I feel like it’s just hard for anybody to make it,” Hannon explains. “I think it’s harder for some people than us. There’s always someone worse off. I’d rather do it on my own if we can. We do appreciate the help. We definitely appreciate it. But we’ve got clothes to wear. We’re good on that. We’ve got food. I’m sure they probably need to help some other people too.”
The family uses food assistance funds to shop at a low-income food pantry in Sanford, which means that Christina’s able to put healthy meals on the table. Weekdays, the kids each have free breakfast and lunch at their schools. In the evenings, Christina uses the small stove in their hotel room to make meals like grilled cheese with soup or chicken breast with mashed potatoes.
“Beth from Families in Transition mentioned they have a food pantry if we need it,” Christina says. “But right now, we can make do. Sometimes, we even have enough to feed the little kids next door that Kimberly plays with.”
Life for the Queens has become frill-free, but Christina says that’s not necessarily all bad. In fact, there’s one big bright side to the situation.
“You learn to do more family things,” she says. “Like we play kickball in the big field behind the motel. And the other kids next door play with us. You just kind of have to keep the kids occupied. They’ve learned how to play rummy, spades and every card game you can think of. We play a lot of cards. We play Scrabble and Monopoly too, all as a family. Sometimes we just walk to Walmart and look around.
“We wouldn’t be doing things together like this if not for the situation,” she adds. “When we were running the different shops, we worked an average of 16 hours a day. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time together. The kids would come after school and hang out, but that was it. So the family time we have now, that’s definitely been a good thing.”
Still, the worries abound, for both the Queen parents and the children.
“It’s finding work and housing,” Christina says. “Those are the worries. Once we get more of a steady income, we can get back on our feet. It’s just the things you worry about in the meantime. When the kids see us going through the job-finder book, Tyler offers to get a job and he used to be the laziest kid in the world. He’s 13, which isn’t even old enough to work, and he’s saying, ‘I’ll go get a job.’ Destiny offers too. She’s old enough to work, but I don’t want it affecting school
“That makes you feel worse than anything else. I don’t want them stressing over that kind of thing. They shouldn’t have to worry about that.”
That’s why the assistance of Families in Transition has been so vital. Destiny wants to be an attorney when she grows up, Tyler wants to be a video game programmer and Kimberly wants to be a veterinarian. Hannon and Christina are thrilled that the kids have their sights set so high, but they also know how crucial it is for them to do well in school now if those dreams are to come true.
“Families in Transition has kept them on track,” Christina says. “Destiny has a couple 10th-grade honors classes and she’s proud of that. I want to see her keep that up. Now they realize what I’ve preached to them for so long: the difference between a career and a job. At any point, you can lose your career or job and nine times out of 10, it’s easier to become re-employed if you have a degree. All of them have said that they want to be something that requires college. I want that for them.”
For now, aside from worrying about keeping a roof over her children’s heads, Christina is worried about something else: Christmas.
“I’m really scared this year that I won’t be able to give them a Christmas,” she says. “That means a lot to our family. I don’t even think it would take much to please them this year. Before this all happened, everything they wanted all year went on their Christmas list, and it was a big deal. The kids have been so understanding. It will hurt if I can’t give them a Christmas.”
But first things have to come first and meeting basic needs takes top priority.
“There’s really not a fallback plan and that’s what makes it so bad,” Christina says. “There were times where we figured we could come back out of what started out as a small hole. But now I understand how people get into such bad situations. Sometimes things are just out of your control, no matter how hard you try. I know now, it’s a lot easier to get buried than to dig yourself out.”
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For more information about Families in Transition or to donate your time or resources to help homeless kids in Seminole County, visit www.seminolehomelesskids.com.
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“If you look at the statistics, every school has homeless children. You may not know who it is. Someone doesn’t necessarily look homeless, but homelessness can affect anyone, and it can happen to anyone. There may be children in your child’s class that are going through that. So it’s about preaching sensitivity to your kids. Rather than judging, how can we be supportive?” – Beth Davalos, Families in Transition
“I know now, it’s a lot easier to get buried than to dig yourself out.” – Christina Queem
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Want to know more? Tune in to the report that 60 Minutes did on homeless children in Central Florida here:
November 27, 2011: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7389750n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox
June 26, 2011: http://www.wdbo.com/videos/online/families-transition-60-minutes/vDmt/
