Sunday afternoon, a young mother said the words she had been putting off for months.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” she told Glenda Buckhalter with Community Outreach.
The 23-year-old and her young child had been sleeping on the floor of a friend’s two-bedroom apartment, surrounded by 10 other people.
The woman and her child are not alone.
According to Buckhalter, they are part of a growing problem in the Golden Triangle: the sheltered homeless.
Those who are classified as homeless are divided into two different types — the sheltered homeless and the unsheltered homeless, according to Heather Ursy with Sally Kate Winters in West Point.
“When you think of homeless … you tend to imagine in your mind an image of unsheltered people who would be more typical to an urban area, who appear as if they live in the street,” Ursy said.
Unsheltered homeless are those who have nowhere to go and are forced to live in the elements. The sheltered homeless are those who will sleep on a neighbor’s couch for a week before moving on to a relative’s house and so on, Ursy said. Or, like the woman Buckhalter encountered Sunday, sleeping on the floor of a crowded apartment.
Before she spoke with the woman on Sunday, Buckhalter said she helped a young family of six move from a hotel room to a home of their own. With four small children, the family had few belongings other than the clothes on their backs, she said.
In the past month, Buckhalter said she has seen approximately 40 sheltered homeless families with children. That number, she fears, is rising.
“We’ve really seen an increase in the last month,” Buckhalter said Monday. Of the 40 or so families who have sought help from Community Outreach this month alone, Buckhalter classified most of them as young families who are parents as young as 18. Some of the parents are still in school while many have school-aged children. Those teenagers, and their children, make up a stark statistic.
Mississippi ranks 49th in the nation for the rate of homeless children, according to a study released last week by American Institutes for Research, The National Center on Family Homelessness.
In 2012-2013, Mississippi had 26,108 homeless children, according to the study. The numbers were compiled based on data from the U.S. Department of Education and the United States Census Bureau.
Officials with the Columbus Municipal School District said they classify 91 children as homeless. In the Lowndes County School District, that number is 58. The Mississippi Department of Education defines homeless children, sheltered and unsheltered, as “individuals who lack a fixed, regular, adequate nighttime residence.”
To help combat the problem of child homelessness, Ursy said Sally Kate Winters created RHY, a runaway and homeless youth program that provides emergency housing to homeless teens, sheltered and unsheltered. The program was established in 2009. A lot of times, Ursy said, homeless teens try to hide the fact that they don’t have a place to sleep at night.
“If they’re teenagers, they really go out of their way to not look homeless,” she said. “They don’t want their friends and peers to know about it.”
With RHY, the teenagers can contact a hotline, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. RHY services children from all around the state of Mississippi but Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties are the leading counties of service, Ursy said.
Ursy said she did not know the number of homeless teens in the Golden Triangle but said nine teenagers are currently seeking emergency shelter though RHY.
Once they are in a safe environment with a consistent place to lay their head, Ursy said the teens transform.
When they first arrive at the emergency shelter, Ursy said they are “guarded, resentful and nervous” as well as “quiet and unassuming.”
Then, she sees them come to life.
“They’re in a place they feel safe in, their guard comes down. They become who they can be without having to put up a guard, put up a guard and act tough,” she said.
For more information on RHY or how you can help, contact 662-494-4939.
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