Recession pushes mom, 3 kids to brink as each day brings a search for shelter By E.B. FURGURSON III, Staff Writer
"Where are we staying tonight?" 8-year-old Jacob Wojciechowski asks his mom when she picks him up from school.
At the end of a long day, Bonita Wojciechowski opens a motel room door for her children, Gracie, 5, Jacob, 8, and Dylan, 11. The family is caught up in the circle of homelessness, as Bonita juggles trying to find a job with figuring out each day how to feed her kids and keep a roof over their heads.
He asks the same thing every day.
Jacob's mother, Bonita, and his older brother and younger sister are caught up in the circle of homelessness.
They are dependent on the kindness of strangers and their mother's pluck.
These days they are "hotel hopping." Staying first at one hotel, then another.
Often it's one church group or another that helps foot the bill to keep a roof over the family's head - for a night or two, sometimes three.
"We haven't had to sleep in the car, yet," Bonita Wojciechowski said at a Days Inn where she and the three kids, Dylan, 11, Jacob and Gracie, 5, spent Monday through Wednesday nights last week.
"The car could be repo'd any day. Then we would really be in a bind," she said Tuesday.
On Wednesday she went to pick up the mini-van from the shop where it had been under repair. They told her the vehicle had indeed been repossessed. Now the family won't even have a vehicle to sleep in if it comes to that.
Since she lost her job in August, the family has been getting by on food stamps and a child support payment from the children's father. He left the family in 2008 just as the economy plunged into recession.
Being homeless, or for that matter unemployed and hoping you can hold on to your house, is a predicament shared by too many families in Anne Arundel and across the country.
There is ample evidence the economic slump is hitting hard here: Between 2007 and 2009 the number of families receiving food stamps jumped 50 percent. The waiting list for housing vouchers jumped by 1,574 between July 2007 and January 2010. The poverty rate in Maryland was 8.3 in 2007 and jumped to 9.7 percent last year.
Of the homeless being served, 30 percent are children.
Bonita had been a stay-at-home mom until her husband left.
Within weeks she got a job as an administrative assistant via a county jobs program made available when she applied for food stamps and other assistance.
She held the job for three years, income that provided some stability for herself and the kids - until August.
She and the kids stayed with family for a while, but with the income from her new job she was able to find a small house in Annapolis.
Finding some element of stability is key to climbing out of dire situations.
"Housing is key," said Marcia Kennai, director of the county Department of Social Services. "But it's a catch-22, you have to have a job. You have to be able to show you are serious about becoming self-supporting."
There are some opportunities for transitional housing where clients pay rent on a sliding scale, gradually paying more rent.
It is a foothold on the climb back from poverty's precipice.
But after about 18 months, Bonita's rent went up.
"I couldn't keep up and I lost that place," she said.
Then it was back to her parents' house. But after a few months there, her recently retired father fell behind and had to give up the rental in Arden on the Severn.
She had to hustle to put the family's belongings into storage and find housing, missing work to get it done.
After a search, Bonita and the kids were accepted into Sarah's House, a family living and support facility on Fort George G. Meade.
"We stayed there for about a month until all three kids got scabies," she said.
Clients have to move out of Sarah's House if they become infectious, she explained. Scabies is a contagious skin rash caused by a minute mite.
The county helped put them up in a hotel and the family was under quarantine until the kids recovered from the scabies outbreak.
She had to stay with the kids when they were quarantined. She had missed work dealing with her moves from apartment to her parents' place then on to Sarah's House. Because of those absences, Bonita lost her job.
And the slide into family crisis snowballed, in a hurry.
Some perceive the homeless as lazy people who live under a bridge or in a tent in the woods. And many see those seeking public assistance as layabouts who don't want to work and coast through life on the public dime.
The hotel hopping consumes much of Bonita's time. Her days are spent getting kids to and from three different schools. Then running from agency to agency or working the telephone to find a charitable outfit that might help defray the cost of a motel room.
Then she has to get food for the family. Food stamps help, but when you are staying in a hotel there is no place to store, let alone cook, food. She has leaned on the Anne Arundel Food Bank for food and supplies.
Every day is stress- and worry-inducing. It's "Catch-22" and "Groundhog Day" spinning all at once.
How children cope is a mystery. Homelessness rips at the very foundation of a child's primary need - stability.
After a few weeks of hotel hopping, the family got back into Sarah's House just after school started this year.
But shelters have strict rules. Primary among them is finding and keeping a job.
"They let you in but you have to find a job within a few weeks," Bonita said.
On Oct. 12, still jobless, the family had to vacate Sarah's House, again.
Since then it has been back to hotel room roulette.
With her administrative assistant background, this mom is organized.
She is sharp and bright-eyed and constantly hustling.
"I keep folders for everything," she said. "I have a bag in my car with different colored files for different things. Food stamps, housing, vaccinations, school."
She is constantly struggling, having to decide which resource to chase during the day.
"If I pursue one thing, another thing gets neglected," Bonita said.
On Wednesday she had a job interview. It went well, she thinks, and she should find out if she got the job any day now.
But now if she gets the job, her unstable housing and vehicle situation could stymie getting off to a good start. Getting the kids to their schools could be problematic.
Any steady income will help.
Last Monday, a church in Edgewater helped her get into the Days Inn in Glen Burnie. On Tuesday the family did not know where it would be staying Wednesday night. She got a phone call about an hour before checkout. She and the kids could stay one more night.
She credits Bruce Michalec at the Anne Arundel County Food and Resource Bank and several other organizations such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society chapters at area Catholic churches for helping at crucial points.
Wednesday night the family got back to the hotel around 8:30 p.m. A relative had driven into the county to take them out for supper at a buffet restaurant.
The two double beds were soon covered in school work and some new pencils and notebooks that were donated.
The oldest, Dylan, said he had done his homework at school and set about putting together a new notebook to replace a well-worn one coming apart at the seams.
Kindergartner Gracie, who turned 5 late last month, organized her stuffed animals, then asked mom for a little help with her numbers.
The two huddled on one bed to get that homework done while Dylan and Jacob kept busy on the other. Dylan worked on his spelling worksheet and matter-of-factly said the paper was wrong - there were not three words that started with "g." He was right.
Bonita keeps the children in as normal a routine as possible. In the evening it is homework first, then she sets out the next day's school clothes for the younger two kids.
"You see, each one has their own suitcase," she said as she pulled Gracie's small rolling bag from under the hotel room's small table where the other suitcases were neatly set in a row. "Do you want to wear the blue shirt with your skirt tomorrow?" she asked Gracie.
"Oh blue, definitely," Gracie answered.
On top of the television credenza there is another row - cereal boxes. It is pretty much a cereal morning every day unless they can get downstairs to a hotel's complimentary breakfast, if one is offered.
The small fridge was stocked with milk and a few other items gleaned from the food pantry.
A few large plastic bags were stuffed into the bottom of the room's small closet, a couple of others were stuffed in a corner.
Soon Bonita had her small briefcase out, checking the color-coded files for the name and phone number of another private agency that had provided assistance.
Considering the daily tumult that defines the family's life, things seemed to be running along like many families with school kids. There was a greater sense of calm than one might expect.
"This is organized chaos," Bonita said as she started steering the kids toward bath and shower time. "Gracie, you want a bath or a big girl shower tonight?" The youngest insists she just had a shower yesterday to which Mom reminds her: "Today is another day."
Then bed. The two boys share one bed. Mom sleeps in the other. And Gracie sleeps on top of blankets her mother lays out on the floor between the beds
"It's fun. It's fun. It's like camping, " Gracie squealed.
But the question remained - where would they sleep the next night?
Bonita was hopeful that the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Holy Family Catholic Church in Davidsonville would be able to come through with an "extended" stay of five nights at a hotel outside Annapolis. She smiled thinking of the calm five nights in one spot would provide.
The church came through with a seven-night stay, so the family is set through Wednesday. And the place has a kitchenette so she got to fix a meal without using a microwave for the first time in weeks, she said.
Despite her struggles, Bonita feels strangely lucky. She is better off than others in her situation because she knew the public assistance system and had contacts at agencies and charities.
That is her advantage. Bonita knows where to go and whom to see because she used to be on the other side of the social services safety net.
That job she held for three years until August?
She was an administrative assistant at county's Family Support Center.
And now after helping people for three years who were in her current situation, she spends all day hustling to hold on to the bottom of the safety net, scrambling for a toehold of stability.
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