Trinity New Hope stories for 2019 Avenues for Hope

Written by Trinity New Hope Property Manager Tami Romine

Family 4 (also featured in 2018)

Finally, the last family was a single mom with five children: One teenage boy and all others under the age of 8.

The mom had always been required by her husband to stay home and take care of the children, not allowed to work outside the home. Additionally, he never put her name on any mortgage contract or anything else to allow her to build any type of good credit. Conversely though, the credit that was connected to her was the bad credit choices he made by putting the utilities in her name and not making the payments. On top of all of this, she was a victim of domestic violence. Besides the oppression, the abuse was significant. In this case though, she had been homeless for a year and had been trying to break away from him for four years. But he had been tying her hands on everything in legal battles. Even her ability to work was and is affected because she had crazy restrictions from a judge that prevented her from being away from the children longer than two hours at any given time, on any day of the week, unless they were in his care.

Finally, CATCH activated her on their waiting list and called us. CATCH got her started. Even though she is STILL plagued by insane restrictions with her divorce and custody battle, she has been doing well in the last 9 months she has been with us. She says she has not felt this safe in a very long time. She still has a long way to go on her journey, but there is no doubt she will get there.

This family is doing very well. The single mom has finally been able to seek employment outside of the home and has a full-time job. She is proud of and grateful for who she works for and that they seem to really like and appreciate her. She volunteers for every extra opportunity for more hours and has been promised the chance to move up in the company in the future if she continues to be an exemplary employee.

With this new income, she has been consistently able to pay her monthly rent and keep a roof over their heads. Even more important, she is happy. That has been something she has not known (according to what she has shared) in a very long time. We expect good things from this family. They have come a very long way since the day they moved in.