A place to park makes a difference for homeless families

Transcript:

Education Beat

Episode 32: A place to park makes a difference for homeless families

Published: March 31, 2022

Anne:

Welcome to Education Beat. I’m Anne Vasquez, executive director of EdSource. Close to 200,000 of California’s public school children are homeless or have unstable housing situations. They’re living in cars, shelters, hotels, or sharing housing with other families because of economic difficulties. When children have unstable housing, they’re much more likely to be chronically absent from school and to drop out of high school. One school district in the San Francisco Bay area gives homeless families a safe place to park overnight.

Tami:

I know what it’s like to be unsure where you’re gonna go in the morning. I know those things. So when I see that look on someone’s face, just like how can I help?

Anne:

Here is this week’s Education Beat with host Zaidee Stavely.

Zaidee:

Tami Rossell is an entrepreneur. She sews and sells clothes and she has her own catering business called Big Mama’s Love. She even teaches a course with a city of Hayward on how to feed a family of 10 on $50 a week based on her own experiences feeding her seven children on a limited budget. She’s a regular at school board meetings, advocating for her kids’ education. But at the end of 2020, Tami and her three youngest children found themselves homeless. First they moved in with one of Tami’s adult daughters, then to a hotel. But they didn’t feel safe there, and it was expensive, $4,000 a month.

Tami:

So I would just stay up and sew all night and get like an hour’s sleep and make purses and make masks and all these things. And my daughter that’s now 16 came to me and she’s like, can you please stop? You’re killing yourself.

Zaidee:

Tami’s daughter was attending school in New Haven Unified School District in Union City, in the San Francisco Bay Area. And it was through the school district that they found a new place to stay, a parking lot where they could all stay in their van.

Tami:

The first day we parked, and I remember that we didn’t go inside. Like I didn’t know, I just thought it was like a place to park. And I had my own bathroom, my own toilet. So I told the kids, you know, just use everything in the car. And we drove off. That was it. So they got dressed for school and I dropped them and that was it.

Zaidee:

A place to park for families with children is unusual in the first place. Many programs that allow homeless people to park don’t allow kids. But later on Tami realized it wasn’t just a place to park. Everyone who stayed there could use indoor bathrooms and shower and wash their laundry. And it was safe.

Tami:

I saw other cars parked and I heard other kids, so I was like, well, we’re not alone. I could hear some baby crying. I mean, no pimp was walking up talking about, I’m cute. So yeah, I felt safe. And then, you know, like as I got to know the people and they began talking and we got to know their story, they got to know our story, you know, then it just started to feel like home.

Zaidee:

This is Education Beat, getting to the Heart of California schools. I’m Zaidee Stavely. This week, safe overnight parking for homeless families. The parking program Tami found is called CAREavan. It’s sort of a play on words emphasizing the word care with capital letters. It started six years ago in 2016 in Union City. The local school district, New Haven Unified, had noticed a big drop in student attendance. So they sent school staff to check in with the families of the students who were missing school. And they realized that rent hikes had pushed many families into their cars. My colleague, Betty Marquez Rosales, wrote about this for EdSource.

Betty:

CAREavan is a safe overnight parking program for anyone who needs it in Union City. And initially it was created for families with children who are living in their vehicles. And now it has expanded to anyone who might need a safe place to sleep overnight.

Zaidee:

Okay, and where do they sleep?

Betty:

So the locations change every day. And these locations are community centers, they’re senior centers. It might be the parking lot of a local house of faith. And they have access to restrooms, they have access to a mobile unit that includes showers and laundry. This began around January 2016, and by May of the same year, they had a few families staying overnight at some of their community centers.

Zaidee:

Wow. And is it, is this the only school district in California that does this?

Betty:

I have not heard of another school district who is doing something like this, and specifically for families with children. I believe there’s a program out of San Francisco where some families can also sleep overnight, but they have access to the school gym. But this CAREavan program in Union City is solely for families who have a running vehicle and they sleep in the parking lots of various senior centers, community centers across the community.

Zaidee:

The difference is that in other cities that might have parking programs or like, you know, I know some community colleges have parking programs we know about, but they’re not usually for families with kids.

Betty:

Any children are usually not allowed. I wrote a story a few months ago out of Long Beach City College that’s in Southern California. Where it’s a community college that began offering a safe overnight parking program for college students who needed it, who were living out of their vehicles. But one of their restrictions specifically was that no children could be staying overnight in any of the vehicles. And so when I found out about CAREavan, that specific detail really stood out.

Zaidee:

Obviously, this helps families have a place to sleep, a safe place. How does it affect kids or benefit kids in school?

Betty:

This program really helps provide some stability when there might not be in their family, in their life. You know, for Tami, she described how her kids, so she’s a mom of seven, but only her three youngest are under 18. So they’re the ones who were staying with her in her vehicle. And she described how before being at CAREavan, they were so stressed and were often fighting. The kids were just feeling a lot of stress due to the instability. And at CAREavan they had a bit more stability. They had a routine, they had dinner time, they had their shower days, they had their, just a routine set aside for them. And that really helped actually bring them together. And that translated into their schooling as well. And into being able to do their schoolwork more consistently, being able to focus more on their homework. And it just really helped to provide that stability that they did not have for several months before CAREavan.

Zaidee:

Tami says staying there in their van each night made it easier for her children to do their homework. And for the family to cook dinner each evening. And being in a safe parking lot with other families gave her a sense of freedom she didn’t have before.

Tami:

I could look straight up, it was almost like it was like sleeping outside, but it wasn’t sleeping outside, right. And I could see the stars and I just felt close to everything that was happening. I could clear my thoughts and get the direction, the path that I wanted to go on. So there was a freedom and it was just this sense of home.

Zaidee:

She made it fun, going roller skating or jumping rope as a family.

Tami:

I have a video, but of course you can’t see cuz it’s nine o’clock at night and it’s like pitch black, but we’re like jump rope and we were playing. I was teaching them The Salami and we were <laugh>, you know, we just had, oh my God, it was just like so much freedom. And so, you know, like there was just a freedom that I found there.

Zaidee:

She also felt she was showing her kids how to survive and thrive, how to get through hard times.

Tami:

I even taught my kids how to wash clothes in the car. So you know, there’s no environment that they can’t survive in. And I taught them the survival skills firsthand. So I don’t know, my kids almost think I’m a superhero <laugh> Kind of like watching myself become a superhero to them. And I think, you know I asked my 16 year old how she felt about it once we got in the house and she said she never for one second doubted me. She knew that I would keep her safe.

Zaidee:

When you met Tami, Betty, what stood out to you about her and her story?

Betty:

Tami, when you speak with her, you can feel the hope just radiating from her. You could sense positivity and a certain level of joy when she speaks. And the way that she spoke, not only about CAREavan, but also just other difficult experiences that she has had in her life, she speaks about those experiences with an understanding that they have helped her become who she is today. And she feels that way about CAREavan as well. She wasn’t happy that her kids were living in a vehicle or that they had unstable housing, but she was happy that they had a safe place to sleep and she was happy that they had food and happy that they were together.

Zaidee:

The CAREavan program has hosted up to about 30 vehicles at a time. In recent months, about 12 vehicles show up on any given night of the week. Programs like this one take one major stress off homeless parents’ plates so that they can focus on doing the things they need to do to obtain more stable housing. Tami and her family stayed in their vehicle, parking in CAREavan parking lots, for almost a year. Recently she was finally able to move into an apartment with some help from a community organization to pay her rent temporarily. In addition to her catering business, she also spends hours each week cooking and preparing hot meals for the neighbors she left behind. Those who still live in their cars.

Tami:

I will serve anyone, not just CAREavan residents. If I find there’s more. Anyone that wants to eat, I’m one of those people I’ll feed ya.

Zaidee:

On a recent Monday, she was cooking rice, beans, corn, and handmade flour tortillas. It’s something she started doing when she was still living in her van.

Tami:

Hey ladies, are you hungry?

Tami:

I would plug in, I had this like long extension cord that we used to use at Christmas time, and I would plug in and in the parking lot outside, I would cook dinner and then just ask who wanted dinner. And so when I left, it was kind of just like, well, who’s cooking now? Like, how are they gonna get a hot meal? Because it’s kind of hard. You know, a lot of the residents don’t have… I had catering gear and camping gear, you know, they don’t have that. How are they cooking? And so I just thought, now it’s the idea they were family. Like, you can’t leave family with nothing. You know, so just coming to make sure they were still okay. They didn’t have to have McDonald’s or they didn’t have to have Burger King or something that wasn’t as healthy for them, especially when you’re in your car and you can’t raise your legs, you know, to get that blood flow in. That was my main concern, just getting good food. That’s good for you.

Zaidee:

Do you think that this program could be replicated in other school districts, Betty?

Betty:

I think it can. It, it really comes down to the communication that New Haven Unified has with the city. And that’s something that Lourdes, the homeless liaison at New Haven Unified School District and that Jesus, the program manager at CAREavan, he’s a city employee. That’s really what they emphasized. They connect with each other. When Lourdes finds out that there’s a family who doesn’t have stable housing, she tries to connect them with Jesus, or at least informs Jesus that she gave them information about CAREavan. When Jesus finds out that there’s maybe a family with a child at CAREavan and they don’t seem to be going into classes, or there seems to be some instability with doing their schoolwork, he’ll try to connect with Lourdes. And they have that communication so that they can really support the students and the families. And I do think that that can be replicated, but it does come down to having the city and the district really connecting on that very personal level.

Zaidee:

For Tami, it’s all about giving back.

Tami:

Sometimes when you’ve lived a certain pain, you know it without saying a word. When you see someone. I don’t know, just there’s a connection and I know what it’s like to be in the car. I know what it’s like to be unsure where you’re gonna go in the morning. I know those things. So when I see that look on someone’s face, just like, how can I help? How can I help the next person that’s hurting? I believe no matter where we are, we can… If I’m on day 30 of my pain and you’re on day one, there’s absolutely something I can do to help you.

Zaidee:

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools, a production of EdSource. Our producer is Coby McDonald. Special thanks to Tami Rossell and the CAREavan program, Betty Marquez Rosales, Andrew Reed, and our director Anne Vasquez. Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions. This episode was brought to you by the California Wellness Foundation. I’m Zaidee Stavely. Join me next week and subscribe on any podcast platform you like.