 | |||||||||||||||
 | | ||||||||||||||
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
 | |
| |
Demographics | ||||
Danica's Story
What I faced in life was being homeless and having to live from hotel to hotel. It was better than I expected because we were not living in a dirty shelter. I was homeless for more than a year. It started in 2003. I did not like being homeless because we became homeless in the winter.
My family had to carry all of our bags of clothes to hotels because we did not have transportation. We had to take the bus, the train and a trolley to get back and forth from Charlestown, Somerville, Brookline, Malden and Dorchester. People used to stare at us on the bus because we used to have 8 or 9 duffle bags and suitcases but some people would be nice and help us get on the train. My mother first tried to keep the apartment by going to court but it did not work. After she came from court we had a week to stay there. It was me, my grandmother and my aunt packing up everything to go to storage, except the food and our clothes.
My aunt videotaped the house just in case the landlord said we tried to damage the property. I was starting to cry when I saw all of our stuff being put onto this big truck. And the men were bumping our stuff a little bit.
The storage place was very far away. They were not cooperating with my mom and she lost the storage. It made me feel sad because we lost everything except the clothes and the food we had.
That same day all of us went to this place to get housing. My mother had her social worker there and she was the one paying for our hotel. I felt happy because it was nice hotels and not crummy hotels. She would give my mother lots of money, food and school supplies every week. I was happy because it was a lot of stuff. It was hard for my mom to go food shopping even though she had food stamps because we were moving every other week.
The last place we were in was this nice place called Brookview House. It was like an apartment until you get your own apartment. It was not like a hotel but it was a place where we felt comfortable like we were home. We knew everybody in there, it was nice and we didn't have any curfew. My mom had to do chores but she didn't mind because it was easy.
The most fun I ever had being homeless was in this home. They had after school programs, summer jobs and camps and nice people. I love Brookview House. Now I live in my own townhouse with upstairs and down stairs and I love it. Thanks to Brookview House. | ||||
| | | | |
