It Ain’t Camping and it Ain’t Fun !!!
With an invitation for a visit, I drove out to the campground, with 40 lbs of good bananas donated from a local grocery store. On the way I was thinking about what I thought I would see. I’ve lived it with my own kids in summers of difficult times. We were stuck between traditional campers and no one knew we had no home to go to at the end of the season. I remember the kid’s whining once the traditional camping period had ended and they were done having “their” little vacation. Remembering the questions, “but why can’t we have our own place.” And “how come I cant go to my old school” as the summer ended. It seems so long ago but the memories remain fresh my heart sunk thinking about all these families, now without housing.
I drove to the owner’s house in the front of the grounds. There in the front dooryard were two people I had already met. There was the one just recently who invited me out and another woman who is disabled and a mom. I met her and her husband over a year ago, she now tells me they has been homeless 15 months.
We chatted for a little while in the office. The owner wanted to charge me a $4. Visitor’s fee, until we convinced him that I wasn’t going to stay too long.
They jumped up into the van and we crawled down the dirt road at 5 miles per hour. As we got near the back of the grounds, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
S. Began pointing out tents and campers of people she knew who were without permanent housing. Some had very large tents; others had pup tents and tarps stung up the best way they could. Still a few more had older model campers and pop up trailers.
We stopped at one tent and two young ladies were sitting at a picnic table under a tarp. S called out, “Where’s your mom?” The girl responded quickly about her whereabouts and then said. “ I can’t talk now, I’m trying to get my homework done before it gets dark.” Their heads went back down to their work and we continued to travel slowly down the road.
We passed another site where someone was breaking camp. S. Yelled over and the woman came to the van. I handed her a flyer on Gimme Shelter and then realized I knew this woman too. She had been working a corner store in my neighborhood, but I hadn’t seen her lately. She said they were packing up to move out because they couldn’t afford it anymore and the trailer they had been borrowing had to be returned because their friend uses it for hunting season. They didn’t know where they were going to go yet; they just knew they had to leave. She was waiting for her son to get home and then they were off. I asked her to call me when she lands and gave her under the bridge brochure. I said to her, “you knew about under the bridge all along, I used to drop papers at the store, how come you never called anyone, the homeless hotline number is right on the front page? She said, “Yah but we’ve never been through this kind of stuff before.” We told her good luck and continued down the road.
Finally we neared the latrine and I was told to pull over and park. Three more children run out from the tent wanting attention from their mother. Dad just brought them back from school in the city. The normal after school chatter begins, and papers are handed over. The oldest is looking for markers so she can make a poster for homework. No one has any markers including me, as I dug through the van looking for the ones we used for the posters at the bed race.
Dad hauls out the bananas and the girls immediately take one and then two. The youngest comes back two more times until her mother tells her, “Enough, you’re going to get sick.”
A child questions, “what’s for supper?”
Mom, “ I don’t even know.”
A child comes to tell mom that she has a fundraiser for school. Mom looks at it and tosses it into the fire pit, explaining “why not!” to the child. Then another child cries about a school project, due yesterday, which requires, pipe cleaners, a Styrofoam ball and some beads. I inquire about which schools they attend and make note of it. Mom pulls out a little booklet from NLCHP on the McKinny-Vento Act explaining that she knows that the schools are supposed to help her with transportation but no one is helping. The kids go off to do their other homework; the smallest of the three runs down to the water to throw rocks in it.
Now two of the Dads are sitting at the table with us three women. Both just got out of work. One is a painter and the other works hot top crew at the airport. They express their frustrations about who they see getting housing and who isn’t. I try to explain refugee and immigration foundations to no avail. They are simply frustrated for not being able to care for their families. One gentleman said that his family is being sanctioned from help at town welfare they didn’t meet the requirement of having all their receipts. He stated that they are being sanctioned because of the loss of a 25-cent receipt and a two-dollar lottery ticket. He said he want s to win the megabucks like everybody else. He just wants a home for his family!
The guys walk off to finish loading the truck of things the neighbors are taking to storage. The moving family is going in a hotel because mom is disabled and can’t take the cold anymore. They will be paying $800 a month and then paying $208 for their storage, mom states it will leave them with $34 in cash for the month for gas for the car, laundry and other non-foods. She said it is a deal because the hotel will give them clean towels, toilet paper and hot showers.
Meanwhile, S begins telling me the campground is closing for the season on October 15th and most of the families, including them still don’t have a place to go. She lists the agencies she has connected with since the beginning of the summer and states her outcomes:
· -security deposit application------- pending
· State welfare, Landlord Verification and will help with a security deposit if applicable-Food stamps ending soon because they make too much money, kids will retain healthy kids insurance but parents are without medical insurance.
· Town welfare, refused told to go to city welfare as they are looking for housing in city and the kids go to school there.
· City welfare where they were referred-told to come back when the camps close because the shelters are all full and the hotels wont take anymore homeless families, they are for leaf peeping tourists
· Social Worker at one child’s school, she saw no outcome in this.
· Church- was told that since they don’t live in that city that the program is unable to help.
She states hat the kids have no clothes, and they cant afford to do the laundry they do have. At the campground they have to pay for showers, laundry and firewood as well as their space. Add in gas back and forth to work and school, food, ice and paper products. They don’t have refrigeration so food goes bad quickly. They have been unable to save any money with three growing kids .
S is desperate for a home. She stated that, “It all happened so fast, we were doubled up with a friend first and then ended up out here. Its hard mentally because when I first got divorced, I told my children that no matter what happened I would always make sure they had a roof over their head, clothes on their back and food in their tummy. I met my new husband. He is a good hard worker and we still aren’t making it. ”
We also talked about pets at the campground and who had them and who didn’t and what constitutes a family and why poor children can’t have pets. And, when they do, it creates another barrier to housing. I told her the story about the family shelter director who brought his dog into the shelter, thinking it was like a therapy dog, when in all actuality all it did was show poor people more economic injustices.
She was going to take me next door and introduce me to another family as they were also just getting home from work, and up behind them pulled the campground’s maintenance man. He asked me if I was going to stay much longer. I told him I would get going. He said the owner is worried; he doesn’t want me to give up the location of the campground because it will wreck his business. I told him I would disclose that info.
All total that S knows of there are 14 adults and 11 children that are homeless but states there are other families down in back on the other side and she suspects they are also homeless, though doesn’t know them. But that she has seen the same kids all summer and now into the fall. As I was leaving a limo with Vermont plates pulls into a campsite. S states that it is all that is left of the man’s business. And the only car they have. Two children jump out of the backseat and into a camper.