“This can happen to anyone. Anyone! Money doesn’t last forever, jobs don’t last forever. You get thrown into a situation where you lose everything. We had an apartment, but the landlord wouldn’t maintain anything. There was a faucet that leaked and started to cause mold, and we had a bad roach problem, and nothing was being done to fix it. And that’s no place to raise a 5-year-old child. Two days after I told our landlord we would be moving, he served us with papers. We had 10 days to get out – the day after Thanksgiving. So we got to celebrate Thanksgiving in our own home, and then the next day we had to be gone. I was Googling and looking for places for us to stay, and the shelters would take us, but not as a family. They would separate us. And when you’ve been through so much, you’re under so much stress from losing your home and everything you own, you can’t separate your family. Especially if you’ve got a small child. Most families that face this end up living in their car rather than have to split up, but luckily Family Promise called us for an interview. It’s such a good program, and they really do help you out. They help you apply for housing, they help you get to where you need to be. And they really want you to be part of a family here. With Family Promise, if you can’t do stuff as a group, as a family, it’s not going to work. This is a family unit – you come with your family, and you join a family here, too.”
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