Homeless Family Survives with Help from Stable Foundation
April 29, 2009 by Sarah Pelham
After nine hours of stocking shelves at the grocery store where he worked, Michael Smith rode the Athens city bus to the homeless shelter where his wife and five-year-old daughter lived.
It was a rainy spring, Michael said. Water would run down the bus windows and dampen the wood chips around the picnic table outside of the Almost Home homeless shelter where his wife and daughter met him each evening.
The painted blue picnic table was the family’s dinner table every night. Since Almost Home admits only women, Michael could not go inside.
Michael and Kelly Smith pose with their daughter, Clarissa Mae, in downtown Athens, Ga., on April 1, 2009. (Photo/Sarah Pelham)
They usually had about an hour to share with one another before chores. Michael’s wife, Kelly, had chores at Almost Home. Michael had chores at the Salvation Army homeless shelter for men.
They scrubbed plates or folded laundry at their separate homeless shelters before getting into their separate beds.
“If we just keep this up, we’ll get to see Daddy,” Kelly told their daughter. The days passed this way.
After four months of separation and minimum wage jobs, Michael prepared to cash in their $1,500 savings on May 10, his birthday, in exchange for an apartment.
But change came 10 days early, when on May 1, the Smiths met with a non profit organization called the Stable Foundation.
The Stable Foundation consists of five board members, one executive director and several volunteers dedicated to ending homelessness in Athens, and they found the Smith family just in time.
“I thought it was really neat that the Stable Foundation could help that family come back together again,” Paul Lazzari, the Stable Foundation’s executive director, said.
On May 10, Michael, Kelly and their daughter, Clarissa, moved into a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath apartment. Next, they accepted a bulky green couch, then a donated 1994 Toyota Camry.
“Without the Stable Foundation, it’d just be terrible,” Kelly said. “It was like getting out of the army.”
For three months, only 30 percent of the Smith’s income went toward paying rent. The Stable Foundation subsidized the rest, since affordable housing means paying no more than 30 percent of annual income, according to the federal government.
The Stable Foundation’s help gave Michael and Kelly time to save more money and plan for the future.
“It becomes more about survival when people are not in housing, about food and weather,” Lazzari said. “But get into housing and then you can take your vision from here to farther down the road.”
Since it began in March 2008, the Stable Foundation has assisted five homeless individuals or families get out of tents, cars and shelters and into living environments that offer stability.
Clarissa Mae Smith sits on top of the bulldog statue on the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue in downtown Athens, Ga., on April 1, 2009. (Photo/Sarah Pelham, sarah.pelham@gmail.com)
But 11 out of 42 homeless families with children in Athens-Clarke County remain unsheltered, according to the Athens-Clarke County Department of Housing and Economic Development.
“It bugs the hell out of me when it’s a really cold night out, and I know that there’s somebody lying in a tent,” Lazzari said. “I need to get that person into housing.”
Neither Michael Smith nor his wife, Kelly, is addicted to drugs, abusive, uneducated or lazy. Like most homeless people, the Smith family lives from pay check to pay check for a simple reason: the cost of housing is high and their wages too low.
Affordable housing is scarce, job opportunities are even scarcer, and government programs for the poor are insufficient in quantity and in quality – these circumstances cause homelessness, according to a National Homeless Coalition report.
Organizations like the Stable Foundation that focus on affordable housing helped to reduce the number of homeless people in Athens by eight last year, from 462 to 456, but Lazzari said that the current system is overloaded.
“You never feel like you are ahead of the game,” Lazzari said. “There’s always more waiting on the waiting list after those ones.”
The hundreds of homeless individuals on Athens’ waiting lists must turn to local government for food stamps and cash aid.
But the Smith family was denied food stamps and offered only a booklet of bus passes after spending hours filling out paperwork and coordinating public transportation, even though both parents worked full-time minimum wage jobs in order to care for their five-year-old daughter, Clarissa.
“You almost have to be a superhero to navigate through poverty,” Michael said. “If you just go through one system your chances of succeeding are so small. You have to rely on yourself and help from friends.”
For the homeless, few friends can lift them out of poverty like the Stable Foundation can.
The Stable Foundation connects the homeless to a network of professionals, friends and resources that provide the security many take for granted.
“The Stable Foundation and Almost Home – these types of humanitarian aid programs, their efforts come from the heart, they make it human,” Michael said.
The Stable Foundation recently assisted the Smith family in applying for a Habitat for Humanity House.
“My dream right now is to live in a Habitat house,” Michael said. “That’s the final piece of the puzzle for Clarissa to have a better life.”
The Smith family wants what any family wants. They want a home.
Having experienced unemployment for well over a year now, after having been emplyed – always, I have a new understanding and compassion for people in this plight. I am not inclined to start or even join the workings of a homeless shelter organization. But I do have friends, and maybe they can do something more than I can. I will send this message on and hope it will reach the people who not only feel compassion but who also look for the chance to help. It is such a very worthy reason to give your heart to people who need you. I know my limitations but I know the people I love are limitless in their compassion.
Personally, and I think I could speak for many, a family like this is not what comes to mind when I think “homeless.” I often relate that terms to beggars, hobos, and general stereotypes. If nothing else, these stories make me realize how many people going through trials right now are just like I am, just less fortunate. It took my almost the entire article to really connect the Smiths in the picture to the story I was reading. Its hard for me to grasp how similar their circumstance could be to mine if I lost my job or if they had a fraction of the fortune I’ve experienced in my life. It’s certainly eye opening.
I think it is wonderful that there is a place like the Stable Foundation that is making an effort to help out people like this, who are not violent or drug addicted but have simply fallen on hard times. Even if it is difficult to deal with the fact that as Lazzari said, on cold nights she worries about the people still left outside sleeping in tents because there are so many people that need help. I still feel like she should still feel pretty good to have taken care of someone, even if it is just one family. Thank you for sharing.
I encourage Michael and Kelly to continue to aspire to a better life and work hard to acquire the job training and life skills necessary to become self-sufficient and provide a stable home for their daughter Clarissa. Perhaps in future years they’ll proudly serve as mentors to other families striving to escape homelessness.
I have met with the founders of The Stable Foundation, two volunteers, and two of the families they have already helped. It is a wonderful program which is tackling the tremendous problem of homelessness in Athens, GA. If you can help financially or with material items (home furnishings, cars, bikes, etc.) do consider seriously supporting this admirable and effective effort!