About Homes for Families

We work with homeless families and shelter providers to reform public policies to ensure that all children in Massachusetts have a home. What makes Homes for Families so effective in delivering this message is that more than half of our staff and board have experienced homelessness themselves. In spite of the state’s housing and budget crisis, we have continued to make progress. In fact, this year alone we saved over 5,000 households from losing their homes.

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373…..10X8…..40….26….18….7….5.

My name is Gabrielle. You may be wondering what these numbers mean. I use them to help a paint picture of what my life was like not too long ago.

373 is the number of days I spent living in a 10X8 room, 40 miles away from anyone I knew, with 26 other families, sharing a refrigerator with 18 people, having a curfew of 7pm, when my daughter was just 5 months old.

White walls with no option of decorating the way I would like. Community bathroom with 7 other people with different standards of cleanliness. Staff who monitored my every move. Not being able to let my daughter explore her surroundings, because they only consisted of hard institutional floors and heavy traffic. I was judged by what time I ate, when I gave my daughter a bath… and by how clean my room was. There is only one other place that I can think of where a person’s every step is monitored and criticized…but I am not a criminal. I am a mother who is trying to give her daughter the stability and quality of life that she deserves.

Abigail and I were homeless in 2006. She was only 5 months old when we entered shelter. It was the most embarrassing moment in my entire life…I was not embarrassed to share my story with the many people I had to encounter in order to receive this service; I was not embarrassed living with the families with whom I shared this service, but I was embarrassed in front of the one person who had absolutely no control in this whole situation, my daughter. I am her guiding light, her protector, her caregiver. I am supposed to give her the world and beyond. Give her every opportunity that is in and out of my reach. I am supposed to be her armor from any pain or hardship. But just when she was most vulnerable, just when she needed me the most to shield her from the elements of the world… I failed her. We were homeless, living in a place where I couldn’t even open the windows to let the cool night breeze blow her reddish blonde hair.

But that did not stop me. I put all my energy into leaving that place. I searched for housing daily, filling out every application I could get my hands on. I worked on my resume and started looking for employment. I also got involved with Homes for Families and learned how to use my voice for more than just finding housing.

With the help of Homes for Families, I realized that beyond finding housing and pulling myself out of the system, I had a bigger job. Homelessness is not taken seriously by enough people. I would have not needed much help to sustaining housing when I first became homeless, but because of misspent finances and resources, it ended up costing the government around $40,000 dollars to ‘house’ me in a shelter for a little over one year. That is more than twice the annual income of someone making minimum wage, working 40 hours a week. This did not make sense to me…and it still doesn’t. We need to break this cycle, teach the ones who need to be taught how to look at homelessness… as a CRISIS and not as a problem. Problems can be solved… a crisis MUST be solved. Too many families are experiencing the most devastating situation of their lives…not being able to bring their children ‘home’. I make it a daily goal of mine to bring to light the issue of homelessness to at least 1 new person. The more people that know how big of a predicament we are all in, the more change will happen.

Homes for Families showed me how to channel my aggression about my situation in the right direction. They taught me about public policy and how policy affects me. They taught me advocacy and how to speak up for myself in a larger picture. I’ve always known how to talk my way out a situation, but being involved with such pioneers in the advocacy world, brought my gift to the next level. I participated in the Families Acting Together Series and learned how and what makes policy the way it is and if I don’t like it, how I can help change it. I completed that training and moved on to their Advanced Policy Training group. There I strengthen my public speaking skills and participate in various engagements including hearings at the State House, focus groups and discussion with shelter providers and high level policy makers, and informational documentaries that help educate about the mission of Homes for Families and how they have changed they way we look at things.

An opportunity arose in Sept of 2008 for Homes for Families to be involved in a Pilot project to help divert families from shelters. An internship was created and I was asked to be involved. I jumped at the chance to be able to give back to the agency that helped me in more ways than I could ever explain. But, I was also eager to meet families that were about to begin the same journey I had been on and I wanted to help in whatever way I could. After the internship ended, I suppose I impressed few people, because not long after I was asked to submit my resume and I began working. I am now a housing advocate. On a daily basis, I help homeless families and individuals achieve the goal that I once had. Nothing is more rewarding than to see a person who has spent even one night in a shelter, being given the chance to show that they do deserve a place to call their own, no matter what their life circumstances are. Now professionally and personally I am invested in helping to break this crisis.

My heart rejoices now that I have a safe, clean home to raise my energetic, talkative daughter, but at the same time it breaks for all the people I have left behind. Especially for the family who replaced me in that tiny room, who have to share their lives with complete strangers and be kept under a microscope for all of the system to see. There is only one other place that I can think of where your every move is looked at and criticized…but I am not a criminal. I am only a mother who is trying to give her daughter the stability and quality of life that she deserves.

I want to make a difference. And with the help and support from Homes for Families, I am.