Opportunity Place Shelter for Homeless Women and Families

As of December, 2011, Opportunity Place had been open 2-1/2 years. That’s not a long time on the calendar, but it has been long enough to establish Opportunity Place as a major community asset for both Okaloosa and Walton Counties. Families come from Crestview, DeFuniak Springs and Santa Rosa Beach, as well as neighborhoods in and around Fort Walton Beach, seeking assistance that is available nowhere else.

Because Opportunity Place is linked into the corporate Homeless Management Information System, we can track our success in detail.

Adults Served: 248

Children Served: 375

Number Adults completing program: 179 (72%)

Adults with employment at time of exit: 219 (88%)

Adults having secured benefits (Social Security, VA benefits, SSI) at time of exit: 7

Adults with secure permanent housing at time of exit: 203 (81.3%)

Adults moving into transitional housing at time of exit: 17 (6.9%)

Adults reconciling with families at time of exit: 16 – (6.5%)

Adults with no known job at time of exit: 29 (12%)

Adults with no known destination at time of exit: 12 (5.3%)

Adults evicted due to non-compliance: 9 (7.3%)

Adults maintaining self-sufficiency one-six months post-exit: 204 (82.3%)

Adults maintaining self-sufficiency one year post-exit: 177 (72%)

*One of these adults contacted us post-exit, and was assisted in gaining secure housing post-exit.

The numbers, however, are only a small piece of the puzzle. The heart of Opportunity Place lies in its staff, volunteers, and its residents.

Success Stories

Here are some resident stories:

Gloria

Gloria came to Opportunity Place as soggy, sodden mess. For the past two years, she had supported her three sons by working 2-3 part-time, minimum wage jobs, 60-70 hours a week. She was holding a dozen balls in the air, as she cared for her children, assisted them with the schoolwork, took care of the house, worked at multiple jobs, looked for more jobs, tried to keep her car running just one more day. The balls began to drop in January, when one of the retail stores she worked at went out of business after the Christmas holidays. She looked for an additional part-time job, but none was available. Then the gas station she worked at went out of business. Now she was left with one 20-hour a week job, three boys to feed, rent to pay, and utilities to keep connected. It wasn’t possible, and for two weeks she lived out of her car. Finally the car broke down, she was late getting to work, and she lost that job too.

Gloria now had no home, no car, no job, and three sons. She called us, and we could barely distinguish the words she was saying through the tears. Eventually we found out where she was, sent a volunteer to collect her and her sons, and began the intake process.

Gloria could barely answer a single question. She was, understandably, a complete wreck. Finally one of the staff told her that life looked bleak at the moment, but within three days it would look brighter, and within a month, she would be back on her feet.

This stopped the tears. Gloria looked at the staff member, and challenged her with the clear words “You’re telling me I’m going to be well on Sunday.”

“Well, yes, that’s what I said. But maybe you are a tough case. Let’s say Monday, tops.”

Fewer words were rarely as disbelieved as those, but Gloria picked up her things, and took her boys to their new room. Suddenly she realized that things were better – her family had their own room, they had a closet, clothes they had brought and clothes they had selected from the clothes closet. They had beds, and a bathroom, lights, air conditioning, and regular meals. She wasn’t well, but maybe she could be.

On Saturday, she was passing one of the staff members, and said, “You are right. I’m going to be well by Sunday. In fact, I may be well tonight.” The next day she went to church and prayed, and the day after that she started her job search.

Within six weeks, Gloria had full-time employment, had been accepted into HUD housing, and was moving out. Glory was streaming from her face as she gathered up her sons into her new used car and got ready to go.

Last night one of the staff members was at a restaurant, when she spotted Gloria, her three sons, and friends all celebrating a child’s birthday. All were clearly flourishing. They were well dressed, well groomed, secure in their future prospects. Gloria came over to speak: “It’s been six months since I left Opportunity Place, but there hasn’t been a single day I haven’t been grateful for everything I learned there, and the help I received. Thank you.”

David

We met David two days after his 11th birthday. He celebrated it in his car, with his mother and two small brothers. They had been living from parking lot to parking lot after his mother finally decided it was more dangerous living with her husband than out on the streets.

David was not a happy young man when he came into Opportunity Place. He had taken on the role of parent for his small family, and to his mind, he wasn't doing a very good job. He had not been able to protect his mother from his dad; he hadn't been able to provide shelter and meals though he had tried to pick up small jobs to raise money for food. Now they had reached the absolute bottom: the family was now moving into a homeless shelter. He was sullen, angry, and very worried.

David's situation was a little more extreme than that of most of the children who come to the shelter, but it was not atypical. Homelessness is traumatic for everyone who experiences it, but it offers unique perils for children. At the point in their lives when they should be learning that life is safe, secure and hopeful, they are facing uncertainty, fear and loss. When their entire focus should be on gaining the academic, emotional, and social skills to forge a successful adulthood, they are instead focused on whether or not they will have a place to stay or food to eat on any given day. Worst of all, children are always trying to protect their parents. They put on a happy face to spare their parents pain, while trying to deal with their nightmares and pain.

The trauma of homelessness is hard on adults. It crushes children.

For David, it wasn't easy to adjust to shelter life. Instead of living with a few people he knew well and loved, he was living with 35 other people, every one of whom was also traumatized, scared and confused. While the room he shared with his mother and brothers was more spacious than their car, it was a lot more crowded than his home. Rather than each person having a closet of clothes, models, video games, the entire family now lived out of a grocery bag containing all their remaining possessions.

But to David's great surprise, within just a few days he began to realize that life wasn't entirely grim. There was the relief of knowing where you were going to sleep, and that meals would appear on a regular basis (and were generally quite good). There were other children who were experiencing much of the same sadness and stress he did. And despite that, they liked living at Opportunity Place. They drew on the sidewalks with chalk, they chased Frisbees, they climbed all over the playground out back.

Best of all, there were people out there who saw David as a child with promise as well as pain. David is a very bright child, with a gift for math and science. As his home life fell apart, he lost sight of his dreams and goals. His grades plummeted, and he began to regard himself as an academic failure. Like most homeless children, he changed schools every time his mother changed parking lots, or found a cheap hotel she could afford for a few days. Often he didn’t go at all, since Mom was worried that constantly changing enrollments would invite government investigation, and lead to an unfortunate reunion with her husband.

Changing schools, going weeks without attending class, struggling to fit in academically and socially when you know this too is bound to end soon, is just another of the unfortunate consequences that scar homeless children. The local school district knows that. David was lucky to arrive in the summer, when the school hosts a creative and fun program for academic remediation.

Teachers quickly recognized David's potential, and began bringing supplies to renew and encourage his scientific bent. He began experiencing academic success, and the doors to learning began to open again. He was pleased to find himself appointed "junior tutor," and by the end of six weeks he was not only back to grade level, but exceeding it. David stunned himself when he realized he was truly happy again after only a few weeks.

Christine

Christine was less a product of bad luck, as of bad choices in her life. She had been a bartender and cocktail waitress for a few years, and drank as much as she served. Through the influence of friends, and a particularly horrible boyfriend, she moved onto crack, and a drug court conviction. She came to us struggling for sobriety, down about as low as she could get.

What Christine has, however, are two beautiful preschool girls. The love and trust they felt for her moved her to her core, and she was determined that she was going to make a new life for them.

Christine used not just the resources of the Opportunity Place staff, but the help and support of her fellow residents. Residents quickly bond with each other, and offer empathy and understanding that only comes from being there. They all talk of being part of a family, with CC as the father figure, Lydia as the grandmother, and themselves as newly forming adults. When Christine had decisions to make, she paused before following her first instinct, and checked it out with those around her.

For instance, desperate for a job so that she could support her girls, Christine started to take a job as a bartender at a “hot” night spot. She knew she could amass a great deal of money quickly. She eagerly went to CC to ask his opinion.

“Why would you do that?” he asked. “You’ve been clean for 18 months. You go in there, and you’ll spend every penny on every bad habit you fought so hard to lose. Is that what you want your girls to live with?”

Christine started to counter with a list of “buts,” then she stopped. She was going to say that she could trust herself in that environment, given her 18 months sobriety, but she knew that was delusional. She went back to CC, and asked if she could stay a bit longer.

The next week, Christine took a lower paying job, but one with negligible risk of substance abuse relapse. “I have always said I love my girls, but my actions have betrayed me. I’m learning what it means to really put them first, and to be a mom they can be proud of.”

Those girls have blossomed. One of them, Kaytlind, has written a book about what she loves about Opportunity Place, her “safe place.” This book, with text by Lenore Wilson, is being published later this month.

Therese

Therese is an Iraq vet, a status she shares with all too many homeless. She comes from an upper-middle-class family, who were proud of their daughter the soldier. She had a wonderful future ahead of her.

Her world literally exploded when she walked into an explosive device. Her legs were severely damaged, and she required seven operations on her knees and feet to become ambulatory again. The mental scars were more difficult.

When Therese was finally discharged from military hospitals (on 20% disability) she was lost. The structure of the military was gone, and her family had no clue what she had experienced and why she just couldn’t “get on with things.” She drifted, experimented with substances, and separated from her family. She picked up with an abusive boyfriend, got pregnant, and then abandoned when it turned out the baby was deaf and had other special needs.

When Therese came to us, she had been walking the streets, pushing her baby’s stroller up and down the sidewalks, wondering where she would sleep, if they would eat, how they would get out of the rain. She struggled with the thought that she had burned all her bridges so thoroughly that no one in her life knew nor, as far as she could tell, cared if she and her daughter survived. All her possessions were reduced to two grocery bags tucked under the stroller seat. As she described it later, she lost not just her home, car and possessions, but any sense of who she was.

It’s not surprising that Therese was another who came to us in floods of tears, hardly able to make herself understood. But it was amazing to watch as she built herself back up for her baby so quickly. Finding a job was an extreme challenge for her, given her limp and incomplete education, but she did not quit. She put in 10-12 job applications every day, going by bus and on foot to any possible employer she could find. She was cheerful, pleasant, positive to the staff, the residents, and job prospects.

Then one day she burst into the common area, and blurted, “I did it! I got a job!” She was hired as a peer counselor for a HUD-funded permanent housing program for chronically homeless adults, most of whom are vets, and she was ecstatic. She is someone else we see all the time, now as a peer rather than a client, and we know it is the perfect job. Helping others pull themselves from despair keeps her from reentering that terrible place, and going back to her home with her beautiful baby keeps her joyous.

The Others

Since we have opened, we have seen children born while their mothers were living at the shelter, and welcomed another at the age of 8 days. We have hosted four weddings. We have had elderly adults come through on a pilgrimage of faith. We have celebrated a Christmas that had to be seen to be believed, celebrated new jobs, and cried when one of our charges was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We have brought in a Pacific Islander grandmother with seven children, who lived in the shelter with an African-American family, a mixed race family, and an Hispanic family, who all blended in as one large family coming together to help themselves and us. We have rejoiced as families have been reconciled, as jobs and houses have been found, as hopes and dreams have begun to take root. We have fretted over those with medical conditions that seem to block off any chance of success, and we celebrate every small step forward. And we have grieved with those who could not move forward, and had to move out. Fortunately, there have been very few of those.

People come in to our shelter, and see those who are just coming to us, all telling the most heart-breaking stories, sobbing their hearts out. They ask, “How can you work like this?” If they stay around long enough, they know. This is the happiest job in the world.


Okaloosa Walton Homeless Continuum Care / Opportunity, Inc.
Opportunity, Inc. (Admin Office) 203 Cloverdale Boulevard, Suite B Fort Walton Beach, FL 32547 Phone: (850) 409-3070 Fax: (850) 409-3071 info@okaloosawaltonhomeless.org	Opportunity Place 305 Lovejoy Road Fort Walton Beach, FL 32548 Phone: (850) 659-3190 Fax: (850) 659-3191