Family Moves Out Of Storage Unit
Displaced American families are going to the extreme these days to find someplace to live. Including one Chicagoland family, that was living in a cold storage unit until recently. From the Chicago Tribune’s Bonnie Miller Rubin yesterday:
Life is infinitely more comfortable for the family that lived in a Streamwood storage facility, thanks to the generosity of friends, family and a wide swath of Chicago Tribune readers who stretched from around the block to around the world.
Maria Maior, her fiance Shane Palmer and her 12-year-old son Brandon were featured in an Oct. 28 story on the spike in homeless families and students.
Their plight sparked an outpouring of donations, from dog food to cash, allowing the family to move out of the cold 10-by-24-foot unit and into an Itasca motel. “I never dreamed that so many people would care,” said the 39-year-old mother. “They didn’t even know us, and yet they were willing to help us out.”
To most people, squeezing two adults, a pre-teen, a chow and Rottweiler into a no-frills motel near the interstate would hardly qualify as luxury lodging.
But Maior pronounced the accommodations “heavenly,” ticking off a long list of amenities — starting with heat, a refrigerator and a bathroom.
“I’ll never take those things for granted again,” she said, while Brandon watched cartoons.
Maior also started a new job Wednesday as a machine operator, earning $9 an hour — her first full-time employment in about 18 months. Contributions, along with her paychecks, will make it possible for them to stay at the motel at a reduced rate through December. “We have a real good shot of getting back on our feet,” said Palmer, who did a brisk business installing carpeting before the housing market went belly-up.
After layoffs, falling behind in their bills, getting evicted from their apartment and losing their transportation (an uninsured drunken teen plowed into their parked van), the family teetered on the edge.
Their solution: hunkering down in a $179-a-month storage unit, along with their household items and furniture.
“We’re not real good at asking for help,” Palmer explained, “which is probably how we got into this situation to begin with.”
With Americans reeling from foreclosures and unemployment, the family certainly has lots of company. And Brandon is one of thousands of students in the Chicago area classified as homeless.
In the first quarter of the school year, the number of transient students was at an all-time high, with suburban Cook, Will and McHenry counties all posting increases of 70 percent or more compared with the same period a year ago.
“The more affluent towns can no longer say, ‘We don’t have homeless here.’ Now, it’s undeniable,” said Maggie Dempsey, homeless liaison coordinator for School District U-46, where Brandon is in the seventh grade…
Homelessness. Despite what we think, it can happen to anyone.
Source:
“Family living in storage unit moves into motel”
Bonnie Miller Rubin
Chicago Tribune, November 22, 2009
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