Why Mom's health can make a family homeless

The sixth policy brief from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness (ICPH) spotlights Mom’s health as big factor when financially fragile families become homeless.

It isn’t really surprising when you think about it, and we see it quite often in the homeless families who come into our program.

All poor women “experience physical and mental health challenges at greater rates than their non-poor counterparts. Poor women often lack access to health care and are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors than those who are not poor. Women and children living in poverty are also exposed to physical and social environments, such as unsafe neighborhoods, toxins, and social isolation, which in addition to stress from the experience of poverty itself can be damaging to health. Residential crowding and poor housing quality have also been linked to adverse health outcomes.”

It follows that health problems can make it difficult for poor women to stay employed and maintain any kind of stability. They are less likely to have jobs with paid sick leave and flexible child care than women who aren’t poor. About 10% of very low income women on welfare lose their jobs due to poor health.

Not just single parent families are vulnerable to homelessness if Mom is in poor health. A number of our two-parent families became homeless when family income plummeted because Mom lost her job as a result of a difficult pregnancy or other health issues.

There aren’t any easy answers to improving the health of very low income families. While homeless children have Medicaid, the parents have no health care coverage. They rely on emergency room visits rather than an ongoing doctor/patient relationship.

What we can do is give them a safe, stable place to live for a while and the counseling to deal with their mental health issues. We can advocate for our clients in managing their own health care and equip them to better manage it after they leave for their own permanent homes.

The only thing we know for certain is what already happened

2011 was a complex year for Community LINC. Thanks to our donors, we were able to provide a home for homeless families and services that equip them for independence. We were able to make some needed building repairs. We began to comprehend the building repairs that are still needed (the bad news), assessed our program performance (the good news) and developed a strategic plan to guide us through 2014.

But, the U.S. poverty rate was the highest since 1993 and our waiting list averaged more than 70 families each month. Homeless families did not share in the economic recovery. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s 4^th quarter 2011 Low and Moderate Income Survey (LMI) confirms that “the financial status of the LMI community continues to deteriorate.” Jobs that pay well are still few and far between and our residents often lack the skills to compete effectively for those jobs. Affordable housing is still in short supply, with the wait time for subsidized housing in Kansas City increasing to five years.

Despite all of the barriers, about 70% of our families left for permanent homes in 2011. The 38 families who exited saved an astounding average of $1,500 apiece. Moreover, the cumulative increase in taxable earnings of the families who have left since 2007 exceeded $600,000 and the decrease in public assistance was almost $200,000.

Our families are successful because we screen for people both willing and able to make a life change and then equip them for independence and self-sufficiency. Our new mission statement says it all - “to end homelessness, impact poverty, and remove the barriers to self-sufficiency for the families we serve.”

Each year, I’m inspired by everyone I encounter through Community LINC - the families who have committed to a life change, the staff who have made this mission their lives, the volunteers who give their time for people they never met, and the donors willing to give strangers a proverbial “hand up.” In 2012 we will pilot two new programs to extend our services to more families and serve that extensive waiting list. I hope that you will choose to be a part of this meaningful mission.

You've Got a Friend

Having a friend, or more formally, a support system, is something that differentiates poor mothers who don’t slide into homelessness from those who do.

The fifth policy brief from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness (ICPH) on the characteristics of fragile families who become homeless makes a number of points. But, the key role of family and friends is the one that struck me the most.

If a poor mother has support from family and friends, she will be able to work more, she will earn more, and she will rely less on welfare than those with weaker bonds.

So, why would that be the case?

The safety net of family and friends relieves some of the financial strains of poverty – they help with groceries, diapers, clothing, and rent. Family and friends who can help out in an emergency with child care or transportation make it possible for a poor mom to get to work and can mean the difference between keeping and losing a job.

The picture for poor mothers who have weak or erratic support is bleak. They struggle to get a foothold in the labor market and end up homeless more often than their counterparts with strong support.

It’s hard to prove or disprove, but we’ve always felt that one of the reasons our program is so successful in transitioning families out of homelessness, is that we give them a readymade community of support. The families live together on a single campus. The adults attend life skills classes and mental wellness groups together. The children play and study together in their classes. They meet other people at the same place in their lives and making the same life changes. They watch out for each other’s kids. They give each other rides.

First they have new neighbors and then they have new friends. And, now we know how important those friendships can be.

"Where you are isn't where you're going"

We held an Open House in our Community Room last night. The room was full of resident families, board members, volunteers and staff. We were all chatting and enjoying the atmosphere when one of the residents told his story in a way that reminded each of us why we do this – work for a nonprofit and commit to this mission.

He was a meteorologist for 20 years, when he got an opportunity to go to an internet weather site for $10,000 a year more. He was making $95,000 a year.

You can guess what comes next.

The internet company went bust and shut down.

He tried to get back on as a meteorologist, but no surprise in this economy, he couldn’t find anything.

In the midst of looking for a job, he had some major things happen in his personal life. The worst of which was his wife walked away and left him to raise his beautiful twin boys by himself.

The spiral into homelessness ended when he and the boys were at a homeless shelter that pointed him to our program.

He expressed his gratitude with dignity for the support he and the boys found while he rebuilds their lives together. It has given him the platform to go back to school to become a surgical technician. He will start his final semester next month.

There are lots of ways that his story inspires - the perseverance, the self-determination - but, the most personal for me was in the way he accepted help when he needed it. He will forever be the model for me of accepting a "hand up" with grace, while neither expecting nor depending on it.

I’ll share more of the research from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness next month, but wanted give you the same gift of inspiration that we all received last night.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season filled with hope and joy.

What else makes homeless families different than other poor families?

The fourth in the ICPH series on families with young children who become homeless identifies still another trait that distinguishes them from poor families who never become homeless.

How old was mom when she gave birth?

Poor women who never became homeless gave birth when they were older. Mothers who became homeless were around 20; under 20 if they were unmarried and lacked a high school education. Mothers who never became homeless were 22-23.

One of the really unfortunate side effects is the impact on the children of young mothers. They are more likely “to have academic and behavioral problems, to display delinquent behaviors such as truancy and fighting, to be incarcerated, and to initiate early sexual activity and become young mothers themselves.”

Homeless and at risk mothers had children with more partners than those who did not become homeless. Having multiple partners “has become increasingly prevalent, particularly among the poor, minority, and unmarried. This growth is alarming; multiple-partner fertility is associated among both mothers and fathers with relationship instability, decreased rates of marriage, lower social support from friends and family, and higher rates of depression.” Their children exhibit poor physical health and more externalizing behaviors like aggression, defiance, theft, vandalism, etc.

While we see the family when the mother and child or children are older, the homeless children who come through our program show the academic, behavioral and health problems the study describes.

The brief goes on to recommend that policy makers interested in reducing child and family homelessness consider programs promoting responsible family planning. We would add, and promote the value of education, and parenting, and job skills, … The list goes on and on.

Another trait of poor families who become homeless

The third brief from the Institute for Children Poverty & Homelessness series on families with young children who become homeless arrived this month. This one examined the role of family structure.

Only 15% of the mothers who were married when their child was born became homeless in the 5 years of the study. Only 25% of the married mothers were even at risk of becoming homeless.

In contrast 56% of the poor mothers who became homeless and 41% of those who were at risk of homelessness were single. Only 23% of the families that were always stably housed were single.

“Married-parent families benefit from higher earnings and economies of scale as well as greater social and institutional support relative to single-parent families. The economic benefits to marriage are especially relevant for women from poor families. While cohabiting families share some similar characteristics with married-parent families, cohabitation results in the accumulation of fewer economic resources.” In other words, cohabiting couples are poorer.

The study adds an interesting observation just in case you think that marriage will lift poor, single women out of poverty. “Mothers who marry differ from those who remain single in ways that bear direct impact on poverty: They are older, more educated, healthier, and have higher earnings.”

I was surprised to learn that “Children raised in cohabiting households exhibit greater behavioral and emotional problems, lower school engagement, and greater delinquency than those in two-parent married or single-parent households.” They believe it is because cohabitation is less well defined and requires less commitment than marriage. There was no direct explanation of why children in single parent families would have less problems.

More on Fragile Families and homelessness

The Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness released their second brief from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study not long ago. Again they are looking at the characteristics that make homeless families different from families that are poor, but do not become homeless. This time they looked at the mother’s education as a factor.

“Compared to mothers who experienced homelessness or were at risk of homelessness, stably housed mothers are both more likely to have attained a high school diploma and less likely to have pursued further schooling.” Who would have guessed it. We always assume that more education will improve your job prospects.

So, what is really happening?

The key is the type of advanced education being pursued. Both the costs and benefits of programs can vary significantly by program type. High cost, vocational or career programs rather than college may create more instability than opportunity. “For profit” colleges have been criticized for their recruiting practices, low graduation rates and poor career placement. So the mother who thinks she’s making life better for her children by enrolling in some programs often ends up a dropout, saddled with significant debt, and no better employment prospects than before.

How sad is that.