‘There are a lot of people looking for housing’

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Just as they first learned they are expecting twins early next year, Jimmy and Kiaura and their 2-year-old son Jayden were beset with a catastrophic plumbing breakage at a rental property.

As is so common in these situations, a slow water leak progressed, ultimately sending water cascading through the ceiling of the first floor. The couple’s home soon became drenched in unhealthy mold, with buckets of foul water scattered throughout the apartment.

“After a second (plumbing) patch-up we got to the point where it was raining in the living room, and we had black mold on the ceiling,” said Jimmy, who was born and raised in Miami.

“We had a bucket in the living room that we had to keep dumping out, and we were almost swimming to the kitchen. And then with the buckets my son wanted to go play in the water.”

Young Jayden was the first to get sick. Then Kiaura became ill. “So we had to get out of there. It affected us in a lot of ways: My son had to go to the hospital because both my wife and son are home all day (breathing that air),” Jimmy said. “The lease was up so there is no way to stay in a house like that.”

Through a referral at Miami’s Chapman Partnership Homeless Assistance Center, Jimmy, Kiaura and Jayden were accepted at New Life Family Center, a Catholic Charities-sponsored motel-style facility in Miami’s downtown area. The residence provides a safe environment for 15 families to take refuge while they get back on their feet. Children are the central focus of New Life.

“This place is better for a single family like us with a private shower rather than dormitories and shared bathrooms,” Jimmy said of New Life, which for several decades has been a community beacon of transitional or emergency housing in Miami.

It’s often the families with children, rather than chronic homeless populations, who have the most difficulty finding temporary shelter following a personal setback or crisis.

With several caseworkers, social workers and an on-site program manager, New Life’s wrap-around services help temporarily homeless clients to regain financial and emotional stability, access and maintain permanent housing, and build strong family relationships, according to the newly appointed program manager there, Janet Nichols, who is regional director of Housing & Homeless Services for Catholic Charities of the archdiocese.

“Rent is really high here in South Florida, and even if you were a person who was never homeless, if you lost a job there is no affordable housing, and there are a lot of people looking for housing,” said Nichols.

She added that with rent rates so high there is a whole segment of people in dire straits who perhaps previously could get by on one income.

“We see this trend of people who would have survived before rent was so high,” Nichols said of the entire South Florida region. “The Florida Keys are even worse: Monroe County is so small and everyone wants to be there because of the culture, and the rent is even more there.”

A local study showed that 982 homeless persons were counted in Miami Jan. 21, 2016. The total number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless combined is 4,235. Downtown Miami saw a slight increase in homelessness over the previous year.

With 15 small efficiency rooms for a total of 60 residents, New Life staff are daily fielding phone calls from a consistent trickle of needy persons seeking a temporary stay. Referrals often come through the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, a board that oversees Miami-Dade’s homeless agency.

To get into the New Life shelter, clients first call a busy hotline operated by Homeless Trust. According to Nichols, there is usually a waiting list at most local shelters.

She recalled recently helping an adult woman find temporary shelter to cover a brief period that she was in Miami to help situate one of her parents in a rehabilitation-retirement center. In the meantime, she was spending all her savings by living in a local hotel from day to day, and on the brink of desperation.

“We helped her for the month,” she said, adding that with so many requests for assistance New Life keeps in touch with other partner agencies in the community. “If you network and reach out, you find more agencies to help because you can’t do it all, you just do your best.”

With a relatively modest budget and a never-ending need to shore up funding, New Life manages to provide more than just the living essentials. Regular volunteers and staff offer: art therapy programming, tutoring, academic and family counseling, and field trips that provide educational opportunities in a fun-filled atmosphere.

Having arrived here following a domestic situation, another family, Alexandria and her children Sierra, 3, and Armani, 5, have lived in various temporary housing situations and shelters for the last several years.

“Before I was here I was at a domestic violence shelter because of the relationship I was in, and June 30 I was brought here and like everyone here I was given 60 days stay. I got selected for a program to have my own transitional housing, and now I am just waiting on that,” Alexandria said.

“I have six months to a year to start working, saving some money because once that six months to a year is up, I have to have some money saved up because I have to get a place for myself and my kids.”

Meanwhile, she coordinates getting her children to and from school, and all the usual busy family activities that she directs from her one-room efficiency at New Life.

“I let them play outside here for 30 minutes every night, and after that I take them inside, give them a bath and by 8 p.m. they are in bed because even though we are in a shelter, I want us to have some kind of structure,” said Alexandria, 34.

“I like that New Life is independent living, and we have privacy and our own bathroom.”

As her children jumped and climbed around an outdoor recreational area here, Alexandria noted she had recently moved back to Miami to be closer to extended family.

“Here in Miami it's hard but I have to do it for my kids. I have been through the homeless shelters since 2010 from shelter to shelter,” she said. “This is my life every day, and even though I have a lot of family here no one is willing to take care of my kids on the weekend so I have them with me 24/7.”

For her part, Nichols, who previously ran Catholic Charities-affiliated programs related to substance abuse, mental health, immigration and unaccompanied refugee minors, said whatever else New Life can help people accomplish, it needs to provide lasting and meaningful assistance.

“I am looking at what is realistic for the clients as to how to keep them in their permanent housing and not to have them rush into getting an apartment and then not be able to pay for it,” Nichols said. She noted that preparing clients with life skills and coping strategies is essential for their future success.

“They can go get an apartment that they love for $1,200 a month, but how will they pay for it the rest of the year? They need to deal with coping and living skills, daycare needs — every part of their life is affected.”

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• New Life keeping families together

• Funding shift threatens transitional housing for homeless

• St. Luke’s: Personal approach to substance abuse treatment