The Changing Face of Homelessness
Part 3

Despite Leslie's optimism, families who take the first steps along the continuum of care have a long and hard road.

Single women and women with families enter ESI Connections, a nonprofit temporary shelter, in downtown Richmond on a first-come, first-served basis.

Calls begin at 8 a.m. for one of the 29 beds.

Competition can be fierce, and a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development study found that in Richmond there were twice as many requests for spots as there was space. Half of children seeking shelter don't receive it.

ESI is clean and decent but very lived in. Quilt-covered sofas sag. Stairs and floors creak, and the smell of cooked food lingers in the air.

During the day a still quiet prevails because staff encourage the women and their children to be out, either looking for jobs, finding social services or going to school.

At night, however, it's noisy and crowded; women and children seem to spill out of the rooms and into the hallways, running, walking, talking, watching TV.

Each family has its own room but they share bathrooms and common living areas.

The shelter sets strict rules and evicts those who don't follow them. Residents must do their chores, abide by a curfew, be clean of drugs and alcohol and submit to occasional random drug testing.

Families have only 90 days at ESI -- three months to find a job, save money for a down payment on an apartment or to pay off bills.

After that, ESI will help place them in permanent housing, public housing or its transitional program.

"They only have 90 days so they need to be active doing things to get ready to get out of here," said Melissa Murchie, a child services coordinator at ESI.

During that time, ESI provides a fairly comprehensive set of services. A woman can get social services, day care for her children, job training and help finding a job.

Murchie helps the families with educational issues, but much of her job is taken up with letting the kids be kids and have fun.

"Most of my job is trying to do fun stuff with the kids," such as going to museums or on field trips to the library. "The kids love it. It gets them out of the house, which they need to do," she said. "There's little space to run here."

After working here for almost three years, Murchie said she's seen people slip into homeless for many reasons.

"There's never any one reason why people find themselves in this situation," she said.

"Sometimes substance abuse eats up their money and they lose their jobs or can't pay the rent," she said.

Mental illness can be a factor, and many women aren't treated for it or deny it.

Also, few of the women have jobs that pay enough to support them and their families. "Financially they can't do it by themselves," she said. "I think a lot of homeless people are working. They just don't work in jobs that pay a lot."

Some work in temporary jobs, and few have full time jobs with benefits.

Only 2 percent of the single mothers get child support and welfare doesn't go a long way to making up for a poor-paying job or lack of another income.

Most of the mothers receive public assistance such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, a cash aid program, and Food Stamps.

Murchie said TANF benefits come to about $254 a month for woman with one child. Food Stamps total $120 or so a month.

"At roughly $374 a month, welfare isn't something a person can get rich on," she said. "Welfare doesn't lift a person out of poverty."

Poverty can perpetuate itself within families, she said. "It's amazing the women who will say I was here when I was a child," she said. "Unfortunately there's a victimization mentality a lot of these women don't want to get past.

"It's the rare one who comes here as a fluke," she said. "Poverty and homelessness are a cycle."

To her, most people lack understanding about homeless people, particularly homeless women.

"These women lack support systems - family, friends. It's like they're out on their own. You can't look at it as it would pertain to your own life. It's so different," she said. "You sometimes have to step back and look at it with a different view. I'm not making excuses. Very rarely have they been afforded the same opportunities most of us have…It can happen to anyone."

But when it happens to children, Murchie said the effects can be devastating.

"I'm glad some of the kids are young enough that they don't know what's going on," she said. "They enjoy the fun activities, the playroom, the other kids. For most of them at that age, this is one of the most stable places they've been in."

But the children sometimes suffer from behavioral problems and some experience regression into temper tantrums, baby talk or bedwetting.

"An unfamiliar situation makes them frightened and they want to make sure mom will keep caring for them, keep paying attention to them," she said.

In addition to psychological difficulties, some children have developmental delays.

ESI brings in Infant and Child Development Services, a state program that checks children aged 0-5 for physical or mental developmental delays and gets help for them if necessary.

For example, Murchie said that ICDS helped identify autism in a 3-year-old boy whose mother mistakenly thought he was deaf.

Murchie said that she hopes her work at ESI will do something to break the cycle of homeless and poverty that many of these families have fallen into.

"I look at my role as starting with the kids," she said. "I think it's so very important to have strong supportive relationships. They miss someone who's invested in them."

She tries to remedy that as much as she can.

"When kids are here we try to build them up. We tell them, 'We care about you, we have expectations of you, I know you're smart,'" she said.

"I think investing time in these families is so crucial," she said, "trying to get them to think big and not think my world's going to be poverty and the projects for the rest of my life"

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