Lois Collins hoped to find a better life in Dallas: a job, more government assistance and a home for her four children and her mother.
The reality has been nights in homeless shelters and days walking around a big, unknown city.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I never thought we’d be homeless,” said Collins, who stepped off a Greyhound bus from Louisiana a few weeks ago. “I figured we’d get in the projects, I could get a job and my mom could take care of my kids.”
Collins, 22, and her family are among the fastest-growing population of the homeless in Dallas and nationwide: women and children.
According to National Alliance to End Homelessness, families with children make up almost one-third of the U.S. homeless population.
In Dallas, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 adults and more than 1,000 children sleep in shelters or vacant buildings, under bridges, in parks or in cars on any given night.
Those who work with the homeless don’t rely on the numbers because, they say, the homeless are difficult to count, and numbers fluctuate.
“It’s a like a bottomless pit,” said Nan Roman of the National Alliance. “We don’t really know, but anecdotically we’ve been hearing for a few years that women and children are the fastest-growing segment.”
Studies show that most homeless women are young, undereducated and don’t have the skills to get or keep jobs that would provide benefits and enough money to survive with a family.
Experts say that although they believe welfare reform is needed, they fear that without more components such as continuing education, transportation and child care, the numbers of homeless women and children will climb rapidly.
“The need is there already, and I think welfare reform can be a positive impetus for change, but some planning needs to take place on the part of the city and agencies,” said Donna Baker of Interfaith Housing, a transitional program for homeless families that is planning to add a phone line to handle increased calls. “Otherwise, there are going to be a lot more mothers and children on the street.”
Collins said maneuvering through the maze of overburdened services can be frustrating for someone new on the street.
“We got so desperate one day we stopped a police officer and asked him for help,” she said. “He said there’s not much for women and children, and I said, `But women and children need it more!’ “
Every day during her first two weeks in Dallas, Collins held her five-week-old daughter, took her other three children by the hand and left the Salvation Army homeless shelter to look for something more permanent.
She contacted several programs that help homeless women, filled out what seemed like endless forms to get on long waiting lists for affordable housing and helped her mother — who recently suffered a minor stroke — find free and better medical treatment.
The shock of being unable to find a place to stay took a few days to sink in, said Collins’ mother, Rita Collins.
“We’d live in a garage if we have to,” she said. “Once we get stabilized, we’re going to do for ourselves. It seems like there’s more help for drug addicts than homeless women and children.”
Salvation Army directors tried to help Collins find a job as a cook. They also hoped to persuade her to use their child care services while she interviewed. But Collins did not want to let her children out of her sight.
“We’re in a strange place, and I worry about my kids,” she said.
But without a job and no means to pay the $7-a-day fee, Collins would not be able to stay forever. And just last week, she voluntarily left the shelter, giving workers little information about where she was going.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do next,” Collins said before walking out. She left no forwarding address, but later said she found an unfurnished low-income apartment where the landlord would give her a couple weeks before making her pay rent. “So I can get on my feet again,” she said.
The Salvation Army hadn’t heard from her since and hoped it would work out. “We see them come and go,” said Carol Frank, director of homeless services. “We try to give them as much assistance as we can. We don’t give them the third degree.”
According to a recent study by the Institute for Children and Poverty, homeless mothers are usually single, are younger than 25, have not completed high school and have children younger than six.
Getting off welfare and finding work is easier said than done, even with job-training programs, many experts say.
Many available jobs pay only minimum wage with no benefits and no real means of providing self-sufficiency. On top of that, most women on the streets have no means of getting to and from work and can’t afford child care.
“One of the critical elements has to be for women to get jobs, with benefits, that they can support a family on,” said Baker of Interfaith Housing. “Sometimes it takes some risk on the part of the private sector to take a chance on these women. They see homeless, they think worthless.”
Homeless women often have additional problems, such as high rates of domestic violence, substance abuse and poor health, service providers say.
In Dallas, as is typical for the rest of the country, overnight shelters report an increase in mothers with children seeking refuge.
Some of the larger shelters, traditionally geared toward men, have had to make changes. Austin Street Shelter partitioned off an area for women and children, and The Dallas Life Foundation has added a nursery to help women who are looking for work.
“We had a woman here last week with five kids,” said foundation director Lanny Thomas. “We’re not in the day-care business, but what is someone going to do with five kids while trying to get a job? Being homeless with children is a nightmare.”
Union Gospel Mission moved from its downtown Dallas location to a larger building on Irving Boulevard to double its capacity for men. Now directors are trying to raise money to renovate the downtown facility to accommodate up to 100 women and children.
Even in the suburbs, shelters are faced with the same problem. Phone calls from women have skyrocketed in the past few months, said Karen Spurgeon, director of Crossroads, a two-year program for homeless families in nearby Irving.
“It’s women, and they’re desperate. They beg us,” she said. “It breaks my heart to tell them we’re full. They ask us what they’re supposed to do. And we just don’t know.”
Her program takes two years because Spurgeon wants women to be able to get enough education and a decent job to support themselves and get off welfare.”
