Homeless issue hits home for single mom
October 24, 2008
A recent court ruling that allows the homeless to camp in parks may have come just in time for Tammy Carlow. The Richmond woman is officially homeless, and two of her children are now in foster care as a result.
“I’m living day by day right now,” says the single mother of three, who has been living out of a two-bedroom motel room in Tsawwassen with her 17-year-old daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend since being evicted from her Richmond home in July
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Meanwhile, in recognition of Homeless Action Week last week, Rich Coleman, the minister of Housing and Social Development, issued a press release that stated his ministry has spent $13 million in Richmond on affordable housing. Most of that was on rent supplements, which are available only to seniors and the working poor, not welfare recipients like Carlow. “We know that breaking the cycle of homelessness requires more than just housing, so we established the Homeless Outreach Program, which operates in 47 communities,” Coleman said in a press release. Again, that does little to help Carlow. The outreach programs are available in seven locations in Vancouver, but none are available in Richmond, according to the ministry’s website.
How Carlow ended up homeless is a long story, and she admits to being at least partly to blame for her own predicament. “Of course I’m responsible for some of it,” she admits. Carlow has been evicted twice in recent years. She blames others — neighbours and landlords — for the evictions. Regardless of who is to blame, her 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son are now paying the price — living with strangers. “In order to stabilize my kids, I put them in Family Protection Services,” Carlow said. “They needed to be stable. I just didn’t want to put them through any more.” At the end of July, Carlow and her kids were evicted from the three-bedroom four-plex she rented in Richmond at $1,200 per month. She admits she was late paying her rent twice.
Prior to that, she had been living in subsidized housing but got evicted, she said, because her neighbours did not like the fact she sometimes let people who were not authorized to stay in the complex at her place. Carlow’s two children still go to school in Richmond. Living out of a hotel in Tsawwassen made it tough for them to get to school. So, Carlow voluntarily put her 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son into foster care. It is supposed to be a temporary measure. She is supposed to get her kids back in a couple of weeks, but as that deadline looms, she still has no prospect of finding a place for her and her children to live. The problem isn’t just the money — it’s the lack of affordable housing, Carlow said. “There is no housing and no one wants to take a single mom with kids,” she said. “It’s just not there.” Carlow also has a dog, which makes it even tougher.
Even people with decent jobs are finding it hard to find affordable housing in Richmond, which has a rental vacancy rate of just 0.7 per cent, according to the most recent statistics from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Given the current market, landlords are unlikely to rent to someone on welfare when they can rent to someone with a full-time job. Asked why she doesn’t find a job, Carlow said she went back to school to become a pharmacy technician, and worked for about a year.
But she said no one wants to hire someone with large gaps in their work history. And even if she did get a job, she said entry-level jobs do not pay enough to cover the daycare costs she would incur. “I make more sitting on welfare than I did going to work,” she said. She adds her doctor has advised against working due to the stress she has in her life.
People who are homeless or hard to house often have poor life skills, which are often complicated by emotional issues and or addictions. “There are reasons they’re homeless,” said Mary Phillips, who co-chairs the City of Richmond Poverty Response Committee. Getting people like Carlow back on their feet first requires getting them stabilized, which is hard to do when they are either living on the street, out of cars or in motel rooms.
There is currently no homeless shelter for women and families in Richmond. One has been proposed, and the City of Richmond has committed $500,000 towards it.However a federal grant that would have helped kick-start the project was turned down last spring, city hall sources say. “Her (Carlow) story does illustrate the need for a women’s and children’s shelter, but also the transitional housing that goes after that,” Phillips said.
David Reay, a city council candidate who also co-chairs the Poverty Response Committee, said various levels of government appear to be passing the buck on the proposed women’s homeless shelter. “The ETA is one year after everybody gets their act together,” he said. “So that means any time within the next five years.”
