9486 in the collection
Trying to Hang On
Lisa spends four hours a day riding the RTD bus with her two boys, to and from elementary school.
It has been that way since the beginning of October, when the three returned to their motel to find a locked door between them and what had served as a place to stay.
Their belongings were still inside. A welfare check Lisa had hoped for to pay for a couple more nights had not arrived.
It was the first time she understood that her family was homeless.
"I was really scared at that point," Lisa said. "I didn't know where we were going to go, and all we had were the clothes on our backs. You don't think about that happening. Then it hits you, and it's a shock."
About a third of the metro area's homeless are children, according to the Metropolitan Denver Homeless Initiative. Lisa's boys - ages 7 and 10 - are among more than 300 homeless under age 18 in Arapahoe County.
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Some of the area's homeless live in motels along Colfax Avenue or Federal Boulevard. Some cram themselves into tiny apartments with three and four other families. Others, such as Lisa and her boys, live in shelters.
For all of them, finding shelter, food or just a ride to school can easily trump something as trivial as homework.
"Getting them to care about education can be a real problem," said Jennifer Clayton, a teacher at Fort Logan Elementary School in Sheridan. "There are different priorities."
Lisa asked The Denver Post not to use her last name or the names of her children to protect them from humiliation at school. She said homelessness has not affected her boys' performance in school, "but a lot of times, we are late."
"Here we go again," Lisa said one day last month as she fumbled out the door behind the boys. Her 10-year-old, as usual, walked to the bus stop in front of everyone, eager to show he could just as easily do this himself.
The 7-year-old hung back, wearing his early-morning fatigue in crusts at the corners of his eyes.
It's the beginning of a monotonous trip from the Family Tree House of Hope in Englewood to the boys' school in Aurora. It takes an hour and a half on a good day.
For Lisa, it is just the first bus trip of five she will make. As if raising two boys on her own and looking for a job were not enough, she spends the whole day in transit. All of it so that her boys are not transplanted from school to school each time she has to find a new place to stay.
"They don't like all this," Lisa said, as the bus drove north on Broadway. "But (the 7-year-old) likes the school he is at now. The house is what keeps us off the street. A lot of times, they just sleep on the way."
Their long trip is not uncommon for homeless students. Schools all over the metro area provide transportation for homeless students to keep them in one school. The boys' school helped them get free bus vouchers from the Regional Transportation District.
"Every time a child changes schools, it sets them back," said Tina Podolak, the former homeless liaison in Sheridan schools. She also played an instrumental role in founding House of Hope. "We want to keep them in the same place for at least one year. That is not easy with people who are homeless."
The boys - a fifth-grader and a first-grader - have been to three schools.
Each school morning, the family walks the five blocks from the bus stop to the school, where the boys say a quick goodbye and run in.
Lisa heads back to the bus stop. House of Hope requires her to be out taking classes or looking for work from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Normally, she gets back on the bus and heads to town to find work - she just finished training to become a barber.
But this day she is trying to arrange day care for the boys during a week- long fall break. Without it, she is not sure what they will do.
She has to get to social services in Aurora to apply for day care, try to get downtown to look for work and get back to the school to pick up the boys at 3:30 p.m. to ride home with them.
"I'll be on the bus all day today," Lisa said. "But I have to ride with them. I don't trust them on this (bus). There are crazies on this one."
It is a good day. The three of them are back at House of Hope shortly after 5 p.m., and a church group has delivered a dinner of meatballs, green beans and potato casserole.
By 8:30 p.m., they plan to head upstairs for bed and prepare to start all over.
"I'm just grateful for all this," Lisa said. "We have never spent a night on the street."
— George Merritt
Education is family's priority
Denver Post
2003-11-01
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0%2C1413%2C36~53~1737279%2C00.html
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