When things got really bad and there was nowhere else to turn, Amanda Dean, a 40-year-old homeless single mother, said she slept in cars with her three children.
Since losing her job last September at a security company due to COVID-19’s impact, she said, things have been going downhill in ways she could never have imagined.
Dean is not her real name. The woman, wanting to protect her children’s privacy, asked that we keep her identity private.
Yesterday, the mother and her three children were scheduled to leave New Providence on a mailboat to go and stay with a relative on another Bahamian island, but bad weather delayed the sailing to another day.
That meant that a frustrated Dean, who had spent the night at a friend’s house, had to figure out where she and her children would stay for another two nights.
Dean and her children have stayed at the homes of friends, at a guest house, courtesy of the Department of Social Services, and most recently at a small hotel – through the help of her member of Parliament, Dr. Duane Sands, who raised the plight of single mothers and other families struggling to make ends meet when he spoke in Parliament a week ago.
The woman told us that she was evicted from her apartment not long after losing her job.
“My landlord was unable to pay his mortgage, so he lost his house to the bank,” she explained. “And he gave me some time to stay even though the light was off and it was only water. I stayed there for about a month. Since then, I’ve been staying in shelters, homes and with people, cars, like if I can borrow somebody’s car.”
She said some friends are apprehensive about moving her and her three children in due to fears of COVID-19.
Sometimes, she said, they have instead allowed her to stay in their cars and that has been what she has had to do when there were no other options.
Stunned that this is the reality some face, we asked the mother about the experience of sleeping in cars with her children.
“Pull the seat back, put the kids in the front seat, let the seat go back and I sit up until morning and watch over them,” she explained.
“It’s not a pride thing. I think I have already passed that pride level to say I have too much pride to contact this one or too much pride to contact that one. I have some friends that I could count on and that was the case.”
When you’re sleeping in a car with your three children, what goes through your mind? We wanted to know.
Dean told us, “Just hoping that everything will be alright until morning, that nobody comes around because you get people who will break into cars, but my faith is strong in God, moving in silence but at the same time with him; so wherever he appoints me or tells me to go that’s where I go.”
Asked what kind of Christmas she and the children had, the mother responded, “Christmas for the last three years has not been Christmas for us, so where we have been so used to not having a good Christmas, it was easier for us this [past] year.”
We also asked the woman about her family and whether the family can help, but she said she and her relatives are not “family oriented”.
We also wanted to know how she feeds the children every day.
She responded, “It’s been rough, but thank God for Hands For Hunger and the [Bahamas] Feeding Network, because if they weren’t around I don’t know how we would have survived. People get tired of you asking for help.”
Dean said the children’s father helps where he can, but because he is also out of work there’s not much he is able to do.
Friends also assist her in this regard, but she noted that so many others are struggling too so they can only help so much.
“The pandemic and Dorian just came, but some people have been going through this storm before that,” said Dean, who told us she has been getting odd cleaning jobs when she can.
“They don’t have the resources to help everybody.”
Dean said she knows many other people facing similar circumstances.
“I know a lot of ladies especially,” she said. “Staying at the guest house (sponsored by the Department of Social Services), I’ve met at least 14 ladies that are homeless and each one of them has at least four kids.”
She said some of their struggles “are deeper that mine, domestic related”.
“I feel like my struggle is a piece of cake compared to theirs,” Dean said.
Speaking further of others she said are worse off, the single mother added, “I know of a lady who sleeps under a tree with her kids.
“I met her there. I wasn’t sleeping under the tree, but I was in a friend’s car and we parked right there at that park and it was frightening to see that somebody was out there in the same predicament.”
We asked Dean what her conversation with that mother was like.
“It was emotional,” she told us, breaking into tears as she recalled it.
“Just thinking about it, because I’m there too, you know, so it’s kind of hard that your parents [grew] you up to be the best and you have the world at your hands and then one day it’s just taken away from you, so it’s kind of hard.”
Dean said she teaches her own children that life is not “peaches and cream” like in the movies.
“You have to work for what you get; you have to have an education,” she said, while acknowledging that being educated is no guarantee for success, particularly when tough times strike unexpectedly.
Dean’s younger children — ages seven and five — have not attended virtual schooling since it resumed last month and she told us they have had grave difficulties with the online classes prior to that.
Dean said she has used her cell phone for them to log on; but one cell phone has been insufficient for them to get the quality of lessons they need.
“I’m very anxious to have them in school,” she said.
And so, she hopes that the move to the island will give her and her children the fresh start they need. She’s also hopeful that they will somehow get the learning devices they need as their new school will also be virtual.
“My hope for them is for them to get a better grasp and a better feel of life and not seeing the sad part of it,” Dean said.
“That’s what they have been seeing.”
She said during emotional periods, her daughter in particular has remained optimistic and encouraging.
We asked Dean how difficult it has been to look in her children’s faces knowing she can’t provide for them.
“It’s hard, but I kind of instill in them also that it’s going to be a better day,” Dean told us. “I don’t want them to feel as if this is the end and we’re always going to go through hard times. I believe strongly that you have to go through a little darkness in life to get the light that you’re looking for.”
Her eldest son who is 16 wants to get to Canada where they have relatives. Dean said he wants to be a basketball player.
“He says, ‘Mommy, we need to get to Canada. We need to [take] our life in a different direction,” she said.
Dean also told us, “Dr. Sands has been great to me from the get go. He helps you if you’re in a situation and he tries to comfort you and hears your story, but there’s only so much he can do.”
Balancing obligations
In Parliament last Wednesday, Sands, the MP for Elizabeth, also highlighted the circumstances of Mrs. Johnson (who did not want her first name used) and her family.
They were not at the poverty level prior to COVID-19 and still are not, but their situation demonstrates the impact COVID-19 is having on middle income families left stressed and burdened, even if the main breadwinners still have jobs.
Mrs. Johnson and her husband have five children, three of whom are still in school.
“They have to eat,” she pointed out. “They’re home all day.”
She told National Review on Monday, she knows there are many people in a far worse position, as she and her husband still have their main jobs, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, their side jobs have been cut out. That means that while fortunately they are still able to pay their mortgage, after salary deductions, they barely have enough to feed their family.
“It (our combined salary) pays the major bill. We will have a roof over our heads, without a doubt, as long as we have that,” she said.
“The other stuff, the emergency stuff [is a real challenge].”
They had not been able to pay their electricity bill for a long time and so Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) turned the power off and they were without electricity supply for all of last week,” Johnson said.
We asked her what it was like for her and her husband to look at their children in the dark.
“That’s the hardest part,” she told us. “You don’t function well because they’re just looking to us. As far as they’re concerned, we’re supposed to have the answers.”
Johnson told National Review that when the pandemic struck, they had already been having some challenges as they had some unexpected medical bills.
They were left with no choice but to take their children out of private school and enroll them in a public school.
“When the shutdown happened, we knew it was just not going to work out,” she said. “The money just wasn’t there.”
She added, “One thing we never wanted to do was take them out the private school system, but we just reached the point where we just couldn’t do it.”
Johnson said with the pandemic and the economic downturn stretching out so long, there are grave uncertainties.
She said she looks forward to the day when she can get her children comfortable again so that when they hear a vehicle outside they don’t have to run to the window fearing it’s a BPL truck.
As they wait to see when a light finally shows up at the end of a very long, dark tunnel, Johnson said they refuse to lose hope that better days are ahead.
“All we have is hope,” she told us. “We have to. Other than that, we would just be dismal all day and we can’t do that because we have to teach our children that at the end of the day you have to believe that there’s going to be a change.”
That change could be long in coming for many.
On Monday, Central Bank Governor John Rolle reported that the country’s economic strengthening and tourism recovery will not begin a meaningful uptick until 2022.
“The virtual standstill of international travel in 2020 underscores the severe negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Bahamian economy,” Rolle said.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Finance reported that in the first six months of the 2020/2021 fiscal year, social assistance benefits — in cash or in kind — expanded significantly, by $91.6 million to $104.4 million — being driven by COVID-related hikes in outlays for unemployment assistance ($66.2 million) and food assistance programs ($30.8 million).
The post Homeless in a pandemic appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/homeless-in-a-pandemic/
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