Our Stories: Delina

My name is Delina and I am currently living in a homeless shelter with my three sons with a baby on the way. I was forced to leave where I was due to overcrowding. I have been here three months and find it hard to accept that this is just the beginning of my long journey towards being housed.

When I first became homeless I felt like a failure as a mother, I was upset and disappointed. Nonetheless it was clear that shelter would be the only way I would be able to gain housing that I could afford to pay so that I could get back on my feet for the sake of my boys. Although right now I am grateful for the shelter where my children are safe and have a temporary roof over their heads, I want so desperately to get them into a stable environment. It would mean a great deal for them to have a place they can call home, where they have their own beds, toys and space. I do over twenty hours a week of housing search, meet with housing groups and a child advocate in order to better their lives.

As I continue the endless effort to be housed by waiting in lines , filling out paperwork, seeing housing experts , I realize none of this is useful with out funding for subsidies. The lack of accessible units in public housing and lack of funding for vouchers that make market rent units affordable will keep me in shelter for months to come. I have many goals for myself and my children, all of which are harder to achieve from shelter.

One way to help me and families like me is to support efforts to fund programs like MRVP that would create voucher so that high rents could become affordable to families like mine.