Please note the original date of publication --- heated mayoral race going on and the Tampa Trib chooses to mine the homeless news from august. WOW. hmmmmmm
Out Of The Shadows
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By SHERRI ACKERMAN The Tampa Tribune
Published: Aug 20, 2006
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TAMPA — From Day One, it has been about the girls.
Their tiny bare feet walking for miles to the next meal. Their unruly blond hair fried by hours of sun.
Their blue eyes staring innocently at a reality so bleak, it would break their hearts if they fully understood. Their parents blend in with the other homeless people migrating to the cheap rooms and soup kitchens along Florida Avenue.
But Connie Jo Couillard, 6, and her 4-year-old sister, Veronica, stand out. Children aren’t supposed to be homeless.
Just the sight of them in the rain with a shopping cart stuffed with everything they own persuades a church leader to temporarily house the family.
A newspaper photograph of C.J. gripping her dad’s hand and clutching a scraggly doll tugs at a new father’s conscience. He hires C.J.’s dad, but admits “without the children, I probably would’ve felt differently.”
A census taken last year counted nearly 1,800 homeless children in Hillsborough County. Advocates for the homeless expect that number to top 2,000 this year.
Many live with relatives or with their parents in the motels lining Tampa’s old thoroughfares. A few stay in shelters; others, in cars.
Rarely are homeless children seen on the street.
But they’re there, advocates say, and their numbers are growing.
Last month, The Tampa Tribune reported on C.J. and Veronica and their parents, Lee and Connie Couillard, after they left a shelter where they slept in the lobby.
The Church of Christ in Tampa Heights agreed to take in the family for 30 days with promises of more help if Lee got a job, the girls went to school and the family saved enough money to eventually support themselves.
It could be the chance of a lifetime.
With the right people, “I’ve seen someone turn their life around in a matter of two weeks,” says Kathy Wiggins, a liaison between the school district and homeless children. For others, the chronically homeless, “it’s literally a lifestyle.”
With only a month to make a good impression on church leaders, the Couillards struggle. On July 11, two days in their newest temporary home, they've made a mess of the room with half-empty soda cans and half-eaten food. Clothes and toys are strewn across the floor.
Connie doesn't like to be told to clean her room.
"It makes me feel like I'm back home with my mother," she says.
She has barely had time to unpack the shopping carts stuffed with toys, family pictures, sleeping bags and clothes. Then there are mountains of laundry to clean.
Their room has two bunk beds and two dressers. C.J. and Veronica like to sleep in the top bunk. The family has access to another room with a television, recliner and three sofas - one of which C.J. peed on.
Downstairs is a laundry room and bathroom - though the girls don't always make it, sometimes urinating through their clothes in front of visitors.
"I never noticed it before," says Connie, who thinks all the stress of the past few weeks has taken a toll on her daughters.
Everything They Need
Fueled by doughnuts, C.J. and Veronica occupy most of their day running and laughing through the halls of the two-story building that houses another homeless man and a church groundskeeper and his wife.
The Couillards are supposed to eat outside in a portable classroom with a kitchen and dining room, where homeless and needy people are fed twice a week.
They have everything they need, but they always seem to want more. Church elders let the family choose outfits from a clothing closet for the needy. Connie stops by twice.
"I don't know what they need all those clothes for," says Orum Trone Jr., the Church of Christ minister. "We have to be careful. Sometimes people take the clothes and sell them on the corner."
Lee's job search initially stalled. After the family's story appeared July 13, readers called in with offers at restaurants, factories and labor pools. Most were too far away to walk, he says.
"Did anyone want to donate a car?" Lee asks. "That's what I need."
Families One-Third Of Homeless
The Couillards are among another growing trend in homeless populations: families.
Nationally, families make up 33 percent of the homeless population, which averages 700,000 to 800,000 on any given day, experts say. In Florida, families represent 40 percent of the homeless population, estimated to be 85,907, according to a June report by the state Department of Children & Families Office on Homelessness.
Wiggins, the homeless liaison, worries the Couillards could also fall into another category: the chronically homeless, whose poverty, lack of education and other issues keep them dependent on social service programs.
Wiggins stops by the church with stuffed animals and finger paints for the girls. She goes over a checklist Connie should have completed since their first meeting a month ago at the Downtown Motel.
Connie tells Wiggins she hasn't had time to apply for cash assistance from the government. She did sign up the family for services from Metropolitan Ministries, a nonprofit that houses and feeds poor people in Tampa. There's a two-month waiting list.
C.J. and Veronica will start school in August, but Connie doesn't know where. C.J. went to kindergarten at Mitchell Elementary last year and will have to repeat the year, Connie says. It took a while for her elder daughter to adjust.
C.J. can write her name, but she barely speaks - until she sees you more than once. Then she wraps her arms around your waist and won't let go. Sometimes, when she's coloring the sun or a rainbow, her body shakes slightly. She's fine, Connie says.
So is Connie, who, at 46, is expecting her third child. Her prenatal visits are going well, she tells Wiggins, then changes the subject.
"She has an answer for everything," Wiggins later tells Trone.
Yet, nothing seems to get done.
That worries Trone, who tried to help another homeless family last year. They wrecked their room and used the church.
"I can't believe I'm doing this again," Trone says, but here he is, trying to understand how to do it better. Near his office desk, he keeps a poem titled "Don't Quit."
Trone sees something in the ragtag Couillards most people don't: a glimmer of hope. Connie and Lee come to Bible classes and weekly services. Lee is quick to grab a mop or wax the floor.
"They are very mild, showing humility," Trone says.
He grows concerned when he hears police picked up the Couillards for questioning the day after they moved into the church. They're homeless, Trone says, not criminals.
Lee says they were on their way to the post office when police spotted the family and kept them downtown for three hours while they confirmed the children's safety.
Later, Veronica, in a rare vocal moment, pipes up. The "cops" aren't nice to her at the library, she says. "They take you to jail."
A Working Man
Before the second week is up, Lee has a job and a ride to work from his new boss, until a few days later, when the boss buys Lee a sapphire blue bicycle. Lee nicknames her "Lady Blue."
He's a deck hand for the Yacht StarShip Dinner Cruise next to Channelside. The job typically pays about $8 to $10 an hour to start.
"Oh, I love it," Lee says. "It's real easy."
At 52, he's a janitor of sorts, but he also greets passengers as they board. He'll get a uniform - a crisp white shirt with bars on the shoulders, a black tie and cap. He can't stop talking about it - asking coworkers daily when he can wear it.
Lee takes visitors on a tour like he owns the boat, up one floor, then another. From the top deck, he can see the construction site where he used to work all day building condominiums in the sun.
Now he wants to learn to steer the ship.
"We're pleasantly surprised," says Troy Manthey, chief executive officer of the Yacht StarShip. "He's doing great, but it's a day-by-day thing."
Manthey contacted the Church of Christ after recognizing C.J. from her picture in the Tribune. A few days earlier, he saw the girl and her family on Florida Avenue.
"I remember thinking, 'They can't be homeless,'" recalls Manthey, who had his first child this year.
He interviewed Lee and learned the Illinois man quit school after the sixth grade, when his father died. Lee passed a criminal and substance abuse screening. He admitted he once had a drinking problem.
That honesty impressed Manthey, who wants to help the family find housing as long as they keep doing well. But he wants to keep his distance, too.
"They have to do it on their own," Manthey says.
Back at the church, Connie can't wait to spread the news. In three weeks, her husband has a job and her girls are getting ready to go to school.
"Lee's on Cloud Nine," she says one afternoon. "Somebody actually gave him a chance."
Connie has changed, too. She scolds the girls as they jump on the sofas and rip around a glass-topped coffee table. They don't listen, but Mom tries to tame them, anyway.
Everyone's feeling a bit prouder. During Sunday's service, Trone boasts to the brothers and sisters in church.
"Lee went from steering a shopping cart to steering a yacht."
Soul Searching
It's the first day of school, and Veronica pingpongs all around her mother, anxious to walk to B.C. Graham Elementary. She wears an oversized, hand-me-down black velvet dress and scuffed tennis shoes. C.J. sports her trademark head-to-toe pink.
When they get to school, Connie explains again to Veronica that the little girl can't stay. The school people lost Veronica's paperwork, Connie says.
As they creep through the breakfast line, Connie borrows 35 cents for Veronica's chocolate milk. C.J. chooses orange juice and a sausage biscuit, but instead of eating it, she shoves the meal across the lunch table for her mom. C.J. prefers doughnuts and soda.
C.J. doesn't cry like the other little kids in class. Instead, she tries to comfort them while her little sister darts to a magnetic alphabet board. Veronica is dying to learn.
She spends her afternoon watching cartoons while Mom tries to rest. As the baby grows, Connie's back hurts and she can't sleep. A month ago, Connie said she was four months pregnant. She says she's only two months now.
Her bulging stomach seems to disagree, but Connie insists she miscalculated and that she gains a lot of weight with her babies. It wasn't something she and Lee planned, but now they wouldn't choose anything other than having this child.
Another week passes - the fourth - and the Couillards seem to be on the right path, Trone says. The plan is to move them across the hall to a bigger room. There's talk of another 30 days, maybe more.
Connie's not particularly religious, but the church has become her salvation.
"God pointed us in this direction, and this might be the right one," she says.
The girls go to Bible school. The family never misses a service - out of respect, Connie says. "They're doing so much to help us."
On Aug. 6, she and Lee pull on some medical scrubs and flip-flops. Connie covers her long strawberry blond hair in a swim cap. Lee, with his sparse hair, doesn't need one.
The husband and wife each take turns being dunked in a tub of water.
"I just felt like it was the right time," Connie says.
So did Lee, who says he was baptized before, when his father died.
"They've been asking us to," he says of church elders. "There's also this rumor floating around. If you do, you get a car."
As their fifth week at the church comes to a close, Connie contemplates their next move. She definitely wants her own home, but she doesn't think they're ready. There's so much they need.
"I don't want to be caught in a similar situation," she says. "I know they would help us out again. It's just the thought of it."
THE COUILLARDS JOURNEY
Last month, Connie and Lee Couillard and their two daughters, Connie Jo and Veronica, had nowhere to go.
They moved out of their Howard Johnson hotel room three months ago, after Lee lost his day laborer job. Connie tried to get the family into a local shelter, but the waiting list was two months long.
The Tampa Tribune published a story July 13 about the family’s struggle. Readers e-mailed and called, most offering help with donations of food, money and jobs.
A minister agreed to take in the Couillards for 30 days, but only if the family made progress toward becoming self-sufficient.
Today’s story follows their journey.
HELPING OUT
For information about homelessness or how you can help, contact the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County, (813) 223-6115; Hillsborough County's Homeless Recovery Program, (813) 276-2976; The Homeless Education and Literacy Project, (813) 272-0673; The Salvation Army, (813) 221-4440; Metropolitan Ministries, (813) 209-1000; or Church of Christ, (813) 223-3170.
Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.
Keyword: Family, to see photographer Jay Nolan's gallery and to submit your comments.
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