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car accident put Jeanne Cote out of work for several months, and when
she was finally ready to return to her job, it was no longer available.
Now she is forced to turn to Casa Maria’s soup kitchen when she runs out of food stamps.
“I have a variety of experiences and I’ve been out looking for jobs, but there is nothing,” Cote said. “There are a lot of people out here with skills, but they are hitting closed doors left and right.”Cote has a 1-year-old daughter and her husband, Michael Schoeneck, is on disability. They are not homeless but Schoeneck’s entire monthly Social Security check goes towards rent.
Across Tucson, people have lost their jobs and are struggling to stay in their homes and feed their families. More and more are becoming homeless and living on the streets.
“Because they are not sitting on street corners begging with their kids in tow, people underestimate the number of families that are homeless,” said Jennifer Anderson, director of programs for New Beginnings for Women and Children, an organization dedicated to helping homeless women and children in Tucson.
Anderson added that before the economy crashed, they were at full capacity but the amount of people needing assistance has been “steady or increasing for about a year.”
The Tucson Planning Council for the Homeless counts all visible homeless people and those in shelters every January, and the number has been increasing each year. In 2008, there were approximately 3,100 homeless counted and in 2009, they counted 3,652.
The current number is estimated to be closer to 5,000 in the metro area, according to Leslie Carlson, the coordinator for the Plan to End Homelessness for Tucson and Pima County. Some people aren’t seen because they are hiding under washes or in cars for protection and others are temporarily staying with friends or family.
“When I talk to people who work every day with the homeless, everyone says there are more people,” Carlson said. “And they are saying that some of the increase is newly homeless and families.”
Shelters around Tucson report that the number of homeless families is on the rise, even though single men are still the highest percentage of homeless.
Tamara McElwee, public relations director for the Salvation Army, said they have seen almost a 70 percent increase in people needing assistance since the beginning of the fall and 75 percent of those people are new clients. She said many people need help because they have lost jobs in construction, real estate or with the car companies.
“The number of families needing our help has probably grown by 10 or 20 percent, I’d say,” said Brian Flagg, coordinator for Casa Maria, which operates Guadalupe’s kitchen. “And it’s mainly that people can’t find work. They’ve lost their jobs or had their hours cut back. ”
When parents lose jobs, children suffer.
In the 2007 to 2008 school year, there were 3,561 homeless children in
schools among 30 districts and charter schools in Pima County, Carlson
said.
Each district is required by the U.S. Department of Education to have a homeless liaison to work with and track the homeless students and provide transportation and money for food and supplies.
In the Sunnyside School District there are 666 students considered homeless so far this year, said Andrea Foster, the homeless liaison. Of those 666 students, 531 have temporarily moved in with family members or friends, 101 are in shelters, 14 live in motels and 20 are unsheltered.
Unlike other districts in Tucson, Sunnyside has about the same number of homeless students as last year, Foster said.
She said it is possible that the numbers haven’t increased because families with foreclosures don’t always identify as being homeless and don’t get help, or they pick up and move to a completely different place when they lose their home.
Typically people only consider themselves homeless once they have to go to shelters because they have exhausted their social network and have run out of relative or friends to stay with, Anderson said.
The Tucson Unified School District and the Marana District have both seen an increase in homeless children in the last year, Foster said.
During the last school year, there were 1,387 students considered homeless in TUSD and already this school year there are 1,441.
As more people lose their homes and jobs, the face of homelessness is beginning to change.
“When we say ‘homeless,’ people usually think of a man on the street or someone that smells,” Foster said. “But that’s not the situation anymore.”
