Daisie Jeffcoat doesn't know how she became homeless in 2004. She can't really explain why she ended up on Los Angeles' infamous skid row, trying to survive hour to hour, day to day with some 13,000 other desperate men, women and children.
Right now the auburn-haired 28-year-old is trying to corral her squirming two-year-old son Jamie in the cubicle-like room they have shared at St. Vincent's Cardinal Manning Center on Winston Street since last February. The toddler, with curly hair and wearing a zip-up jacket with yellow-striped sleeves, is all over the tight quarters, bouncing from one twin bed to the other and playing with stuffed animals.
The single mom cannot really comprehend even today how she became part of the urban subculture of disenfranchised Angelenos who barely eke out an existence in missions, long-term transitional and emergency shelters, and on the filthy and dangerous streets of the 50-block area just a short walk from the gleaming glass skyscrapers of downtown.
"I'd been living with my grandmother since I was six 'cause both my parents were drug addicts," Daisie reports matter of factly. "We were like the whole family, just the three of us. I was halfway through an eight-month medical assistant course at Bryman College and she was helping me go to school.
"Then one day we drove in from Riverside and she just dropped me off down here on Main Street. I was totally shocked. I had absolutely no idea what happened, and I still don't," she adds with a shrug. "One minute I'm there, and the next minute I'm here. And I've been here ever since. True story."
For a few months, Daisie stayed at the Union Rescue Mission, which is mainly a men's facility, but also has a program for women with children. Then she lived with an older couple from a church in South Los Angeles, who she says forced her to work long hours and took all of her "GR" (General Relief) welfare money.
Hanging around skid row, she met a guy and became pregnant. A month before her due date, she moved to El Paso, Texas, just because "it sounded like a nice place" and she didn't want to have her baby on the row. While she was staying at a mission there, Jamie was born. When he was five months old, they returned to Los Angeles in 2005.
Daisie went to the Union Rescue Mission again, before she and her reunited boyfriend with their baby moved into a motel. But soon she and Jamie moved back briefly with her grandmother before staying at a couple more shelters. In one, she says, they lived in basically a garage.
"The whole time since I've gotten to skid row, I had a few men who were interested in me, but nothing worked out until I met his father," she reports. "And then we started a family. But with Jamie I had to find emergency shelter. So I came here to St. Vincent's Feb. 27, and we've been here ever since."
"They've helped us a lot. We have our own room here. We have a kitchen we can use, and a big screen TV and a DVD player. And we have privacy. There's only five families here at one time, so it's very comfortable. The baby has friends, and I have friends. The staff helps us with everything. But, most of all, I have a safe place to stay and take care of my son."
At St. Vincent's Cardinal Manning Center - sponsored by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Catholic Charities of Los Angeles - Daisie has a case manager plus a counselor she meets with weekly. She's taking parenting classes at the Children's Institute.
In addition, she saves 70 percent of her $585 monthly cash grant from CalWORKS, which provides temporary financial assistance and employment services to low-income families in California with young children. To date, she has been able to sock away about $2,500.
Using the Internet, she searches for jobs almost every day, mostly by going to craigslist.org and other websites. Currently, she has a few "good" leads, including one as a call-center telemarketer for a moving company. And through a local social service agency, she has been able to apply for Section 8 subsidized housing.
"I've really been looking for jobs, and I can't wait to be employed," Daisie says with a smile and giggle. "I can't stand being in this situation. I don't like being on welfare, you know.
After a moment, she adds, "I'm really looking forward to getting on my feet," glancing over at Jamie playing with a teddy bear, "and taking care of him. My goal is to become stably employed."
Housing and jobs
Those two goals - getting Section 8 or affordable housing and finding fulltime work that pays enough to support a family - are no easy tasks in Southern California today for homeless mothers, women who often have little or no marketable job skills and formal education.
Established in the 1970s, the Section 8 housing voucher program is federally funded but a network of local, state and regional housing agencies distribute the funds to people with disabilities, the elderly and low-income families with children. Usually, the subsidy pays about two-thirds of their rent.
But the problem for local social service agencies is that Section 8 money is nearly frozen. And with many low-rent apartments being converted to condos or luxury flats, it's practically impossible for single mothers receiving about $500 a month in temporary welfare grants to find long-term housing.
"My program is going through a crisis right now because my avenues of affordable subsidized housing have come to a halt," reports Justin Mammen, who coordinates the mother-and-child program at St. Vincent's Cardinal Manning Center. "So it's really hard, especially if they're undocumented.
"If a family comes in and it's undocumented and at least one of the kids is not a U.S. citizen, you are in a very, very scary situation. 'Cause in order to get access to welfare services, at least one member has to be a citizen. You can't be on CalWORKS if you're undocumented"
Finding work for homeless moms is another major problem, according to the 25-year-old social worker. Many have "zero" job histories or higher education, having totally relied on their partners for support. Mammen says this is especially true for victims of domestic violence, who were under the all-controlling thumbs of their abusers.
"The hard part is a lot of our women don't come in with a lot of marketable skills," he points out.
Mammen estimates about 10 percent of the women he sees have simply grown accustomed to living in shelters, even though it's a very tenuous and stressful lifestyle. Others have tried to make a last-ditch stand by living in cars with their kids after being thrown out of a relative's home or evicted from an apartment they could no longer afford.
Whatever the reason, being homeless for a single mother is extremely difficult.
"When you're in homelessness as a single person, there's a lot of barriers you have to deal with: the mental and psychological effects, sometimes substance abuse, chronic poverty, just low education," he ticks off. "When you're a homeless family, it's that and then some.
"You're worried about your kids not being in school and the instability of your situation. If you go on a job interview, and don't have any childcare, you have to take them with you on interviews - and how many people are going to hire you after that?
"I know homeless mothers are often perceived as lazy because in most shelters they just have to sit and watch their children," he observes. "But I've learned there's just so many barriers they need to come across."
So how does Mammen define success working with homeless families?
"I always consider a success someone who moves into some type of permanent, stable housing," he says. "I think our ultimate goal as social service providers - and I know myself as a social worker - is to get people into that permanent housing."
'It's weird'
That's what Daisie Jeffcoat is shooting for. She just finished applying for Section 8 housing through a special program still being conducted in California by the housing agency Beyond Shelter.
But the single homeless mom admits her life is hard right now trying to take care of her two-year-old son, going to counseling, learning how to budget and taking parenting classes, while also attempting to find work.
"I'm taking in all this, I'm keeping at it," she says. "It's hard to go to a job interview after job interview and not be hired. It's just hard to be homeless and unemployed. I can't stand to be unemployed. Being both is very difficult."
"We get the runaround a lot from CalWORKS, and it's really tiring." she adds. "It's hard on us. We have to go from place to place and wait in line after line. We spend all day in offices and on the bus and train. It's just one thing after another, and most of it doesn't pan out for us."
But besides the futile job search and social services snafus, Daisie says things are starting to look up. Jamie is putting on weight really fast, and learning how to use the toilet by himself. Moreover, she feels secure and cared for at St. Vincent's Cardinal Manning Center - even if it is on skid row.
"It's almost like it [homelessness] is not happening until we come home at the end of the day," she says. "It hasn't changed our lives at all, except the ugliness that's out here. There's really disgusting things going on and some nasty people. But it's almost like it doesn't exist. That's how it feels. It's weird."
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