Amy L. Freeman

Writer, Development Director, Yogi, Mom

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When There’s No Home for the Holidays

When There’s No Home for the Holidays

While it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of gift shopping and menu planning this season, thousands of Americans are desperate for the basics: food and shelter. For mothers like Diane, the spirit of Christmas feels very different.

As the crescendo of holiday music, food, and family gatherings rises around us all, the first and only thing on Diane’s mind is her absent son. Now housed for nearly two years after living on a park bench for more than three, she is physically safe but remains emotionally raw. The holidays serve as a reminder of the connections she once had, but has now lost.

Up until 2013, Diane had a traditional, even idyllic life story: She was born in Tennessee and grew up in Washington, D.C. along with her parents, brother, and sister. She graduated from college and then law school. She got married and taught business law at a small university while her then-husband went to dental school. She had a son. Got divorced. Her husband moved to California, taking their son and the lion share of custody. Then her mother died. Her brother died. And in 2013, Diane’s father died.

“That’s when everything fell apart,” she says. “My sister just wanted to disappear; I don’t know why, but now I’m the only one left.” For financial reasons, she became homeless after her father’s passing. Living outside on a wooden bench, contact with her son, now 38, became more and more sporadic until it faded into silence.

The U.S. homeless population increased this year — the first spike since the Great Recession — with 553,742 Americans surviving without shelter on a single night, according to a new federal study. Many people point to the West Coast’s housing crisis as the culprit behind the 0.7% rise in homelessness since 2016, but one could argue that those in the North East, where the winter months are harshest, face the toughest battle. In Maryland alone, there are approximately 7,689 people living without shelter, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. This number is far greater than several geographically larger states, including Alabama, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. It is greater than the homeless population in West Virginia and Indiana combined.

“This is not a federal problem, it’s everybody’s problem,” Ben Carson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which produced the federal report, said in a statement.

And it’s a particularly heartbreaking problem once the holiday season hits. Regardless of whether we live in houses or on park benches, we all want to feel like we belong. To a family, to a community, to something — anything — larger than ourselves, especially during a time in which most of the country is gathering together and breaking bread. We chose to focus on women and men in the state of Maryland for our look at what homelessness is like over the holidays: Diane F. seeks solace in her past. Karmen M. tries hard to embrace her present. Jennifer C. and James L. look tentatively toward their futures.

Diane covers her nose when she speaks, to both hide her teeth and protect against dust mites.

“I’d wake up alone in the dark, crying, in 10-degree weather, wondering why everyone had forsaken me,” she says, glancing out her window, of the years after her mother, brother, and father passed away. “I lived outside for three years, with no help, in the cold. A lot of times, people would ask me if I was okay and I’d say I was, even though I really wasn’t.”

Bethesda Cares, a Maryland-based homelessness outreach team, saw through her façade. They spent months working with Diane to get her a small room in a privately and government-funded program, housed in a building set up like a college dormitory. Instead of resident assistants, though, this building comes with on-site social workers. By the terms under which she was admitted into this housing program, she can stay there for the rest of her life; all she must do is pay a third of her income — if she has any — as rent.

Diane now lives in a dormitory-style room, secured by the homelessness outreach team at Bethesda Cares in Maryland.

MagguiGR Photography

The walls of her room are stark and white; Diane hasn’t decorated them yet. Her floor is white linoleum with black and dark blue speckles, over which she’s laid a dark blue area rug. A Crock-Pot sits atop the dresser, and numerous shopping bags, overstuffed and overflowing with her possessions, line the floor and the side of her bed. She’s taped notes to several of them, indicating their intended disposition: Clothing. Donate to Bethesda Cares.

The only time Diane smiles is when she thinks back to her childhood. “We always celebrated holidays,” she says. “Even if everything wasn’t good, we tried to make everything happy. I loved our fruitcake and Christmas cookies, decorated with food coloring and powdery sugars. Oh, and a big turkey dinner.”

This year Diane considered making a turkey for herself, in her shared kitchen. “But I was a half-hour late to the place where they were giving out turkeys, so I didn’t do anything for Thanksgiving this year.” She shrugs. She just wants to celebrate with her son, but she hasn’t heard from him since March. When she calls his phone, she gets an error message.

The holidays are making his absence more acute. “I don’t want to celebrate without him,” she says. “That’s why I didn’t put up any pictures, that’s why I don’t decorate,” she says.

Diane wears pink socks under a pair of sandals to keep her feet warm.

Maria Garcia Ripa/MagguiGR Photography

 

Diane is waiting for her son to call her again. Then she’ll move out and move in with him, she says.

Her phone hasn’t rung for months.

 

Karmen M.: “I Go Wherever the Meals Are”

Standing in a public restroom, Karmen splashes her face with cold water, patting it dry with paper towels from a broken dispenser. Digging in a garbage bag she’s brought with her, she removes a donated toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste and begins to brush her teeth.

She favors color-coordinated outfits, and she doesn’t like to appear in public without a full application of makeup. Instead of in a closet, Karmen keeps the clothing she’s not wearing in garbage bags she stashes in “hidey-holes” throughout Bethesda. Now in her late 50s, Karmen has been suffering homelessness since 2004,when she could no longer pay the mortgage on her California home. For a while, she slept in a car but no longer has access to it. Despite the danger and the harsh elements, she now sleeps outside.

Like Diane, Karmen is college-educated. She grew up in San Jose and got a degree in business and accounting/information systems and technology. She is fluent in Spanish and French. Unlike Diane, though, Karmen tends to focuses on whatever or whomever is currently in front of her, and that includes holidays.

Karmen attends both public celebrations and those sponsored by local nonprofits and well-meaning strangers. Each year brings something different, depending on where she is sleeping. “I go wherever the meals are,” she says. “I just love to be part of the festivities.”

Karmen declined to be photographed for this piece. Here, one of her Santa hats.

MagguiGR Photography

“This year, I went to a parade in Silver Spring,” Karmen says. “I just loved seeing the community out enjoying themselves, the new generations of families, babies, it’s all new to them.”

Although she has no place to live, Karmen she still tries to give back. “I like to do what I can for the community,” she says. “When I was in my home, I gave coats to charity. I liked to give to Toys for Tots, too. I can’t do that now, of course, but I still like to give.” She smiles broadly; her perfect white teeth are a rarity in the homeless community, where dental care is considered an out-of-reach luxury. She continues: “You know those newspaper dispensers? Sometimes if someone opens it, I grab the door before it’s shut and leave a little gift for the next person, a surprise of some kind.”

Karmen isn’t interested in focusing on the family with whom she no longer speaks. She says she has two biological sisters and two more from a second marriage. “And I have six brothers,” she adds. “I guess I could look them up online,” Karmen muses, noting she makes frequent use of the computers at the public library. “I’m thinking I might have other family, closer by. I might look some people up on Ancestry.com.”

Thinking about the holidays, however, gets Karmen thinking about other milestone-moments: her birthday, and about high school, and college reunions.

“I don’t care much about my birthday. That’s just another lonely, depressing day,” she says. “But I’d love to go to my class reunions. I went to one, five years out. You know how it is, you see the women with the careers, or babies, or military service, they had their whole lives planned out.” She pauses, glances again at the garbage bag. “If I go now, I could just say I’m planning to go back to school. Because I am.”

Karmen travels with some of her belongings, and hides extra clothes in ‘hidey-holes’ around Bethesda.

MagguiGR Photography

 

Jennifer C. and James L.: “Holidays Were Just Another Day”

Like the experiences of former inmates reintegrating into society following long prison terms, the transition from long-term homelessness to housed can be an emotional rollercoaster. After 14 years of shared homelessness, Jennifer and James are adjusting to their new situation slowly.

The ground-floor unit that they now call home is located in a pleasant, low-rise apartment complex in Germantown, Maryland. In early November, they had, with trepidation, left their few possessions in the tent where they’d lived, moving into the one-bedroom apartment. The space is already furnished with donated items. They are keeping the apartment tidy and uncluttered, but there are no holiday decorations. Not this year, at least.

James and Jennifer, formerly a couple, are now just friends.

MagguiGR Photography

Once a couple but now just good friends, Jennifer and James have known each other since 2001, while each still living at home. At the time, their family situations were comparably tumultuous, involving financial mismanagement and alcoholism; within a few years, Jennifer and James became homeless together. Over the years, they stayed in a variety of spaces. Most recently, they slept near a Dumpster behind a Shell station, and before that they had their tent in the woods.

James is acutely aware of the emotional toll being homeless has taken on him. “Just one day without a roof and you start to feel like you have a screw loose,” he says. He never observed any holidays while he was enduring homelessness. “Each day is just like the other one,” he says. “You’re not accountable to anyone, you’re just living one day after another. You’re in survival mode. You’re traumatized, really.”

“Super depressing,” Jennifer agrees. “Holidays were just another day.”

James talks about the places where they’ve slept over the years. “You want to be safe, right? You have to build a spot somewhere secret,” he explains. “You don’t talk about where you’re staying, you don’t talk about the location at all, to anyone.”

They’re taking the responsibility of maintaining the apartment seriously, facing their futures with baby steps.

“I know that having this unit is a huge responsibility — It’s in good shape and I’m going to keep it that way,” James says. “That’s how I was raised. Keep things as good as they were or better than you found it.”

James and Jennifer eat a pumpkin pie from Bethesda Cares.

MagguiGR Photography

“One day, I want to have a traditional family-style lunch,” James continues, with a hint of excitement. “That’s what the holidays are. Family, with all the trimmings. I want that feeling, that sense of belonging.” Then he stops himself. “But that’s down the road. Can’t get ahead of myself. We don’t have any set patterns yet, financially or anything else.”

Jennifer echoes his caution. “I want to get used to an environment that’s normal,” she says. “One day, I’ll decorate. Maybe make chocolate chip cookies or brownies. And I want to go to church on Christmas Eve. I miss being part of that community.” James nods in emphatic agreement. “But this year, we’re just getting off the ground.”

James’ phone rings and his face lights up during the call. It’s a caseworker from Bethesda Cares. “She’s coming by with a turkey later this afternoon!” he reports, beaming. Her offer is unexpected and James seems suddenly excited to take the small but traditional seasonal step of roasting a turkey. “You couldn’t cook in the woods,” he explains. “Those plumes of smoke would give you away to the police in a heartbeat.”

“It may take a while to break out of this mold, to get out of that survival mindset,” he says. “You get stuck after a while, you know?”

Jennifer agrees. “Life has been rough,” she says. “James and I worked together to make it work out, but I want to throw it all behind me now.”

What does she like best about having an apartment? Jennifer doesn’t hesitate. “Having a washer-dryer,” she says.

When wearing clean clothes is no longer a novelty, she and James will have reason to celebrate.

This piece first appeared in GoodHousekeeping.com on December 15, 2017