{"id":6943,"date":"2011-11-07T11:31:56","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T16:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=6943"},"modified":"2014-05-20T13:23:57","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:23:57","slug":"sinclair-student-conquers-the-challenges-of-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2011\/11\/07\/sinclair-student-conquers-the-challenges-of-homelessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinclair student conquers the challenges of homelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong> The person interviewed wishes to remain anonymous, and will be referred throughout the article as Jane Smith. This is her story.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes our lives don\u2019t go as we plan, but for Sinclair student Jane Smith life at the time was going well.<\/p>\n

Smith had a house, lived with her husband and was working as a union carpenter, which she said was good money.<\/p>\n

Until her life took a turn for the worst \u2013 she lost her job in 2006 and then Smith and her husband lost their home in 2007.<\/p>\n

Finding a place to live<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I lost my job, I curled into a ball and cried for many months,\u201d Smith said.\u00a0 \u201c\u2018I thought now what? What am I going to do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Smith said that in the process of not being able to get another job, they lost their home. The unemployment ran out and then their credit card debt rose until they lost everything.<\/p>\n

At the time, Smith and her husband lived in their van and kept looking until they were able to find a place that allowed pets.<\/p>\n

Smith said that they were working again, but had been unable to find a place to live.\u00a0 Then a co-worker offered to let them live in her barn with their animals.<\/p>\n

She said they readily took the chance to be sheltered during the winter even if it was in a barn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe barn was basically metal decking, dirt floors, no insulation and a well for water,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt did have a light and a receptacle. We stayed there for 15 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trying to survive<\/strong><\/p>\n

Smith said it wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

To stay warm, during the winter, they wore multiple layers of clothing and had to sleep under five to six heavy blankets.<\/p>\n

To wash, they filled a turkey deep fryer with water to heat the water. They would fill up the container with water and then boil it. She said she remembers bathing in the barn in 35-degree weather because there was no heat in the barn, so they would lather up and then throw cups of water over themselves to rinse the soap off. She used the same process to wash her hair; often times she said, her hair would turn into icicles.<\/p>\n

To cook, they used a two-burner propane stove, but she said the problem with that was they had to eat fast because it was so cold that the food would quickly get cold.<\/p>\n

When they had no money for food, she said they had to go to food banks and soup kitchens for their meals and various organizations for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt humbled me.\u00a0 We were fortunate enough to sometimes be able to go to a friends or my mother-in-laws house to take a shower and eat, which was maybe once every couple weeks,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI soon realized that I had a strong ability to get through adversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she lived in the barn, she enrolled at Sinclair Community College. The hardest part was studying in the barn because the weather was usually hot or cold or windy and wet. But she said she kept pushing and didn\u2019t want to give up \u2013she was getting an education.<\/p>\n

A lesson learned<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toward the second year of living in the barn, the co-worker told them they had to find another place to live because it was nearing winter again.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The coworker] was afraid that one morning she would come in and check up on us and find that we froze to death during the night,\u201d she said. \u201cMy friend learned a valuable lesson too. She had only seen homeless people that were standing on the corner asking for money. [The coworker] said she never had a face or a name to put with those homeless people, until she met us,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

The co-worker, Smith said, had to change her thoughts about homelessness because she always assumed that homeless people were just lazy, drunks or addicts. But after she met them, she saw that they went to school, were educated and worked hard. They just couldn\u2019t make ends meet.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Smith said that funds are still limited because they are living on minimum wage, but they have been living in their current home since the winter of 2009.<\/p>\n

They do a lot of budgeting and try their best not to put their wants over their needs.<\/p>\n

Smith said she is still pushing and working hard to continue her education. She is double majoring in communication and business management and hopes to graduate in the spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not regret anything. I have learned so much about going through the process. I can\u2019t say that it was the most comfortable to go through,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI had a great job, I was making good money and I didn\u2019t appreciate it. Then we lost everything and we became homeless. It made me really look at my priorities and what was really important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The person interviewed wishes to remain anonymous, and will be referred throughout the article as Jane Smith. This is her story.\u00a0 Sometimes our lives don\u2019t go as we plan, but for Sinclair student Jane Smith life at the time was going well. Smith had a house, lived with her husband and was working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1NZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10037,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6943\/revisions\/10037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}