“I didn’t want to lose my children.”
Most women don’t think about having their children taken from them. But for a 27-year-old resident of Family Promise of Branch County, who will be referred to as Beth, homelessness made this a very real possibility.
“I’m not a bad mom,” she said. “But I felt like it at the time because I couldn’t provide for them. I was most afraid of losing my children. But, because of Family Promise, I didn’t.”
A house, a job, a car: for most people, these are commonplace elements of everyday life. But for the homeless, they are a hard-won passport to independence and security.
Patty Roberts, director of Family Promise, went through the program she now orchestrates and continues to lead other women to a home and a future.
“I was hurt really badly and had to get surgery, so I couldn’t work,” Roberts said, speaking of her time spent in Family Promise. “I just struggled through and I was eventually able to find a good job. I worked a lot of hours, but I finally got enough money to find my own place.”
After procuring an apartment and establishing income, Roberts has gotten progressively higher-paying jobs, a better car, and a scholarship — all within the past five years. Her own struggle with and victory over homelessness helps her minister to the women of Family Promise.
“When I work with the girls, I use a different type of approach,” Roberts said. “I tell them my story. I tell them I have been through this. I give them strength. I keep instilling it in them: it will be okay.”
And, given support, it will be. Family Promise works within an extensive network in the Coldwater area to provide for the homeless or displaced members of the community. Pines Behavioral Health, located in Coldwater, serves as the financial hub for outreach efforts, using local churches and shelters like Family Promise to great effect.
“The community works together,” Roberts said. “We’re very good at networking and trying to find a place for someone to go, instead of living in their car or a tent. We have a lot of resources in the community as far as getting them a hot meal immediately or a hotel room for the night until we can decide what to do with them.”
Suzanne Edmonds, who co-directs the homeless ministry at First Baptist in Coldwater with her husband Terry, said that local churches sign up for week-long host periods for those in the Family Promise program.
“The churches rotate,” Edmonds explained. “They go back to Family Promise during the day, so that they can get a telephone and computer and look for a job.”
There is some local government action to help the homeless — a housing project in Coldwater, for example, is underway — but most of their aid comes from the combination of community and state-level financial assistance.
“We have people who spend the night with them,” Edmonds said, “people who feed them, and some who transport them.”
Richard Wunsch, the owner of Volume One Books in Hillsdale and a former activist on behalf of the homeless, clarified the distinction between the “homeless” and the “shelterless.”
“The homeless have no place to call home,” Wunsch said, “but the shelterless are worried about staying warm at night.”
Last winter, the McDonald’s in Hillsdale kept its dining area open overnight and some without shelter spent their nights there. There are widespread predictions of an even more brutal season this year.
For the most part, effective community action takes place within and between local churches. Roberts uses her position at Family Promise to coordinate religious communities in the Coldwater area and Wunsch believes that, ultimately, the same must happen in Hillsdale.
When the community rallies around those who need its help, it changes the men and women both giving and receiving the aid. For Beth, one of the biggest realizations she had at Family Promise was that the community did indeed want to help.
“People are open to listening to other people,” Beth said. “They’re willing to understand our situation and willing to help, no matter what the situation is. She reassured me that there is a spot out there, even for people like me.”
