Billy is a homeless baby boy. His mom and dad are unemployed and live in a tent in rural Maryland. With our help, Billy’s parents recently got a volunteer to temporarily house and care for him while they look for work and wait to move into a crowded shelter.
Billy and other homeless children have been called “America’s Youngest Outcasts.” Their ranks have swelled nationwide in the past decade due to a number of factors, including high poverty rates, lack of affordable housing and the lingering impacts of the 2007-2009 “Great Recession.”
A study last year by the National Center on Family Homelessness estimated that nearly 2.5 million children in the United States – one in every 30 – went to sleep at some point in 2013 without a home of their own. It put the number at 30,645 in Maryland, half under the age of 6.
Nobody knows for sure how many homeless children there are. But we know that they are not confined to poor counties. Last school year, 552 children were identified as having been homeless in Howard County, with another 182 in Carroll County, two of wealthiest areas in the nation.
Countless other homeless children, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of them, go undetected. They often move quietly, almost invisibly, from the street to the couch of a friend or relative to the backseat of a car to a motel to a campground to a shelter—and then, perhaps, back to the street.
Many parents are too embarrassed to report their child as homeless. And children hide it from their classmates. Or at least try. One teenager in Howard County recently walked a long and circuitous route to school each day, hoping no one realized he was coming from a nearby shelter.
But here is a fact of life tough to avoid: Homeless children face an increased risk of getting sick, dropping out of school, and, like their parents, ending up in poverty and then, perhaps, having homeless children of their own.
We are trying to break the cycle with one of our signature programs, Safe Families for Children (SFFC). Working in collaboration with churches and the state and local government, SFFC recruits and trains “host parents” to temporarily care for a child while their mom or dad deals with homelessness, joblessness, drug addiction or some other life crisis.
Since April 2011, we have had 91 “hostings” of children, with an average stay of about two months.
“We provide the child with a safe and secure place to live,” said Tammy Folkerts, our SFFC outreach coordinator. “Their parents agree to use this time to try to get back on their feet, find a job and a place to live—and work on any other personal problem that they may have.”
Sheryl has been one of our “host moms” for two years. She has hosted a total of a dozen children from seven different moms. Billy—not his real name—is the youngest. He is only a few months old.
“He is doing fine,” Sheryl said. “He is a very sociable and happy baby. He is a typical baby. And his parents are happy that he is safe and warm—and not on the street.”
Sadly, there are always more children becoming homeless, creating trauma in young and old.
“I don’t know what we are going to do,” a single mom said after she and her three children were recently evicted from their apartment and spent the weekend squeezed together in motel room. “The shelters say they are all full.”
Debbie Marini, our executive director, said, “Homeless parents and their children suffer from isolation and vulnerability. We must provide them more support, and more resources.”
“Who better than the faith community to show this hospitality?” Debbie said. “The bringing together of these families with a community that can help lift them out of poverty is what we are all about.”
Visit www.buildingfamiliesforchildren.org/sffc or www.safe-families.org for more information.