An A+ for Effort

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JOHN’S MOTHER WAKES HIM UP FOR SCHOOL AT 6 A.M. She doesn’t fix his breakfast in the kitchen or pack his lunch while he gets dressed. John, his mom and two older brothers are sleeping on the street, outside St. Vincent de Paul Village, hoping for a spot to open for them inside the shelter.

John’s family arrived from Arizona, where his mother was out of work and suddenly homeless. “She thought it might be better here,” he says. “But right now we live on the sidewalk.” John is 15, tall, handsome and soft-spoken, with a talent for fixing cars. In the morning, before school, he showers at the Neil Good Day Center and takes a trolley to Monarch School, a school for homeless children 8-18 on West Cedar Street.

During the day, the shopping cart holding his family’s belongings is stored at Neil Good, while John’s mom works at a job she just got at St. Vincent’s. Before that, she worked briefly at a taco shop. John’s half-hour trolley ride is paid for with tokens he gets from Monarch. When he arrives, he’ll be able to eat breakfast before class. Linda has been at Monarch for several months. The 11-year-old is shy but quick to laugh, with a ragged head of hair constantly falling into her eyes. Her mom, two brothers and sister have moved around a lot, usually living in hotels and shelters. Her younger brother, she says, constantly sneaks away and sets fires, a propensity that made it impossible for Linda’s mom, who is disabled, to continue cleaning houses. At one point last year, after being kicked out of a church shelter, the family began panhandling.

“We had to ask for money on the street to get enough so we could stay for two days in a hotel,” says Linda. She rocks back and forth in her chair, studying her fingers as they lace and unlace. A man offered to rent the family the living room of his National City apartment, which Linda’s mom now pays for with her disability checks; her son is in a hospital receiving treatment for psychological problems. The new living arrangement is far from ideal.

“We all stay in the same room and go to bed at the same time. This guy has other roommates, and one gets up at 4, another at 5 and another at 6, so it’s hard to sleep,” says Linda. “But I get up in the morning and take the trolley to school because I like it here so much. The teachers help us a lot.”

For kids like John and Linda, the month of September doesn’t signal an end to summer vacation, because there is no summer vacation when you’re homeless. Monarch School is open 51 weeks a year; without it, many of these children would have no place to go during the day, no one to supervise them. Studies show they would likely become involved in crime or with drugs or wind up victims of hate crimes and sexual assault.

NATIONWIDE, about 1.35 million children experience homelessness in the course of a year. Put another way, one-quarter of the country’s homeless population are children. And the fastest-growing segment is households headed by women, says Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C. According to rough estimates by San Diego’s Regional Taskforce on the Homeless, there are about 1,625 homeless children and adolescents in San Diego County.

All of the students at Monarch live in poverty. More than a quarter live in local shelters, and about 30 percent live in motels or SROs (single-roomoccupancy hotels where you can rent by the night—but your neighbors are often drug dealers), in cars or on the street. The rest generally find a place to stay, temporarily, with family or friends.

Peter, for instance, is staying with a friend of his father’s, “kind of like an uncle,” he says. An adorable 10-year-old with big brown eyes and a head full of black curls, Peter doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t homeless. Right now, his mother and father live in Tijuana, the only place they can afford; his mother works at a food stand, and his father is a janitor.

 Peter’s brother, who is just 14, is largely responsible for Peter and his 12-year-old sister. On weekends, the three children travel alone by trolley to Tijuana, where they see their parents.

“My brother takes good care of us,” says Peter. It’s gray and windy outside, and he shivers slightly in a thin white T-shirt. “I like school, especially math, but I wish I could just go to TJ and be with my mom,” he says. Later that morning, Peter and a small group of students are learning about bears in preparation for a field trip to the zoo. Teacher Ellen Smith De La Cruz asks about the difference between teddy bears and real bears.

Peter answers, “Teddy bears are something you can hug and keep in your room, but real bears attack and kill you.” He adds, “Can I have some more juice and another breakfast bar?” and picks at the crumbs in the wrapper of the bar.

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