Nearly 30% of people who experienced homelessness in Clark County last year were children. That’s according to a recent report by the Council for Homelessness, which also found that the percentage of family households stabilized through rent assistance dropped by 5% last year.
For families experiencing homelessness in Vancouver, they may have to wait months until a spot becomes available at the few shelters that allow families.
The nonprofit Share operates two shelters in Vancouver for families, each with 14 rooms, on-site laundry, a communal kitchen and dining area, and indoor and outdoor play areas for children. As The Columbian recently reported, Share’s shelters have remained at or near capacity for years.
Adrianna Kofoed, director of family shelters at Share, says she and her staff have seen increased demand in just the past year, with at least five or six calls a day from parents seeking help for their families.
Kofoed joins us to share more details about Share’s family shelters. Also joining us is Gracie White, a mother who has been staying at Share’s Homestead shelter for roughly a month with four of her children.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Jenn Chávez. Nearly a third of the people who experienced homelessness in Clark County last year were children. That’s according to a recent report by the Council for Homelessness. It also found that fewer family households were stabilized through rent assistance last year than before.
Shelters that serve unhoused families in the area are seeing the growing need for help firsthand. To learn more about this, we’re joined now by Adrianna Kofoed, the director of family shelters at the Vancouver-based nonprofit Share. Also with us today is Gracie White, a local resident and mom who’s been staying at one of Share’s shelters with her children recently. Adrianna and Gracie, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
Gracie White: Thank you.
Adrianna Kofoed: Hi. Thank you.
Chávez: Adrianna, I want to start off with you. You work specifically around helping families experiencing homelessness. What do you think people might not understand about the families you work with, or how homelessness might be different or unique for families versus individuals?
Kofoed: Yeah, that’s a really great question. I think that one of the biggest misconceptions or maybe judgments that I have seen, or heard of, or I think that a lot of people have, are that homelessness happens because people don’t want to work or don’t want to help themselves. The reality is that homelessness is incredibly complex and it doesn’t discriminate. It could happen to anybody. I’ve met families who were working full time and that job loss was what set them into homelessness. I’ve worked directly with families who had a medical emergency, lost childcare or just simply couldn’t keep up with the rising cost of life.
Especially when we’re dealing with families, I think that adds an incredibly complex dynamic to a situation like that where it’s not just an adult trying to survive themselves. We have parents who are trying to take care of their children, and that is expensive. It could be just one emergency or one medical issue, loss of childcare – there’s just so many things. I think a common misconception is that it’s because people don’t want to help themselves. I’ve watched families be so incredibly resilient in their circumstances, and come into shelter and be able to get out of survival mode. And they do want to help themselves and their families.
That’s kind of my thoughts on that. It is incredibly complex and a lot of these people are some of the hardest working people that just are looking to rebuild their lives.
Chávez: Yeah. And I know your organization, Share, has two shelters that serve families. When a family arrives at one of your shelters for the first time, what are your highest priorities for what you and your colleagues are providing for them while they’re living there? What are you thinking of first?
Kofoed: Stability. Well, safety is the first thing, getting them inside and stabilizing them. Really, a lot of these people, like I’d mentioned, they’ve been in survival mode. So, stability is the first thing. I would say that all of us here really focus on getting them in, making sure that they trust us, building that trust right from the beginning and just laying the foundation of future work to come. But I’d say safety and stability for sure.
Chávez: Gracie White, I know you are currently staying at one of these shelters, and I definitely want to ask you about how that’s been. But first, I want to ask you what I asked Adrianna just a minute ago. What do you think people might not understand about families like yours who have dealt with and struggled with homelessness?
White: I think what Adrianna said was like hitting the head right on the nail. A lot of times I get a lot of backlash and I feel like there can be any reason why someone becomes homeless. A lot of times, for me personally, having my kids, they say, “well, you shouldn’t have had too many kids,” “you don’t work hard enough,” “oh, you don’t want to work,” something about being on drugs. And it’s just a lot of negative judgment without knowing all the hard work that I personally put into trying to take care of my family.
Chávez: So, by the time you were able to get into Share’s Homestead Shelter – one of the two family shelters they have – how long had you been waiting for an opportunity to get into a shelter?
White: Three years.
Chávez: Wow, OK. And how did it feel to finally get that call, be able to move into a shelter like Homestead?
White: Sorry, I wasn’t expecting this to hit me the way it is.
Chávez: No, that’s OK. That’s OK.
White: But it was really emotional. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders. I knew with this opportunity, I’d be able to calm down. My kids can find peace, somewhere that they can sleep comfortably without stressing or wondering in their little minds what’s next. So it was really, really a life changer for us. It was a weight lifted off of me, just really positive, but really emotional.
Chávez: Can you tell me a little bit about your kids?
White: Well, I do have five kids: my 17-year-old, 15-year-old, 12-year-old, and I also have my 3-year-old and almost 1-year-old. They’re very active in school. My older three, they’re all in school, very active with sports. My oldest, she does two sports a day: volleyball in the morning, basketball in the afternoon. So it’s just really active, really busy. I just want them to be able to be kids and not have to worry about where we’re gonna be able to shower, where we’re gonna have to sleep tonight. So they’re really amazing.
Chávez: And how are y’all doing? You’ve been at the shelter for about a month. What has it been like for you staying there so far, you and your kids?
White: It’s been really great. The people that work here have been so supportive and helpful. The other residents, we all come together, we support each other, we share. We all know we’re in the same situation. It’s been easier for me because I’m able to help regulate my kids’ nervous system as well as mine, get out of survival mode, get some rest and take a decent shower. So it’s been really great. It’s definitely been a blessing.
Chávez: Adrianna, I want to turn back to you now for a minute. From your view at Share, how have the needs of families experiencing homelessness grown in recent times?
Kofoed: Tremendously. I started with Share about a year ago. At that time, I was in a position where I was working the day shift here at Homestead specifically, and I would get a lot of the calls that came in throughout the day. And at that time, we would get at least a couple a day, families just desperate for help, either whether they were already on the waitlist with Counsel for [Homelessness], who sends us our referrals, or [if] they were not at that point, we would give them instructions to do so. A lot of families reaching out, knowing that they were gonna be facing homelessness soon and looking for shelter options.
That need has grown to where, not only are we getting those calls, we’re getting about double those calls nowadays to both of the family shelter sites. We have families that show up here, and that’s really tough because we operate at capacity the majority of the time, if not all the time. Once we get somebody housed, we have somebody waiting. So, it’s an unfortunate situation when a family shows up, but we’re getting that at both family shelter sites as well, people just showing up desperate. So the need has grown tremendously over the last year that I’ve been doing this work.
We’re seeing a lot of bigger families, families that were able to hold on and maintain housing for as long as they were able to, and now due to their family size, they can’t do that anymore. And we have large families, a lot of bigger families that are coming into shelter. So the need has increased tremendously this last year.
Chávez: What are the biggest barriers that you see that are preventing families from either getting into stable housing or staying in stable housing?
Kofoed: Definitely the lack of affordable housing. Really, that’s what it boils down to. We have two adults that are working full time and it’s still not enough just to maintain housing for their family. I think that second-chance housing, people who may not have the greatest credit or not the greatest rental history, but have overcome a lot of the barriers since that time in their life to be able to move forward into housing, the options are very limited. So I think the affordable housing and lack of rental subsidies for people who may not have the means to increase their income, but just need a place to live.
Chávez: Gracie, I’m wondering what that has looked like for you and your family. What has it been like to try to find affordable housing in a place where the cost of living is really high and folks are facing some of the struggles that Adrianna just talked about?
White: I feel like a lot of it is like she said, the high cost, a lot of it is the move-in cost. They ask two-and-a-half to three times the rent when the rent’s already high. So it kind of plays in with the financial system that’s in place as well, because personally, I made enough money to afford a rent, but when it comes to how much it adds up for the month, it’s not two-and-a-half to three times what they’re asking for. And then, you make too much to get help with food or anything else as far as insurance. So now, what I am making goes into, do I save this for the deposit or a $50-$60 application fee, or can I go buy my kids food with this? So the application fees, the moving costs and everything is just really what’s discouraging also.
Chávez: Yeah, I totally understand how discouraging that must be. I understand that families at the shelter that you’re staying at all set up a housing stability plan. What does yours look like, Gracie?
White: Right now, since I actually recently lost my job due to homelessness, it’s just trying to maintain my kids’ mental health and getting them back, and mine as well. Being homeless, and going through these hoops, and then dead-end roads after dead-end roads could be, I guess, discouraging and can mess up our mental health. So trying to get back in a positive and stable mental, emotional state for now and also find something that fits for my family as far as employment and childcare. So just taking it day by day until I can comfortably transition into something long-term for my kids. Because, like I said, being in survival mode for so long, it’s kind of hard to plan for the future when all we’ve been doing is day by day. So it’s just trying to maintain that right now.
Chávez: Well, I’m glad you’re at a place where you can kind of catch your breath from being in survival mode a little bit.
Adrianna, I wanna ask you, what do you think would most empower you and other service providers in your area to be able to serve more families and help get more people into housing?
Kofoed: I think an increase in places for families to go to receive the support, the case management and the resource navigation. For them to start to rebuild it. I talked with so many people, families every single day, about just how defeating everything feels or how any task feels like it’s this mountain. But when they have somebody come alongside them, who believes in them and sees hope, it’s really contagious.
I would love to see more places like the family shelter programs here at Share opened, so that way we can be not only a provider that gets anybody experiencing this housed, but [also] set them up with the success, the tools, the knowledge and all of the things to be successful long-term. So that the shelter was just a chapter in their story and the rest is ahead of them. I think that it would be really transformative to our community to see more family shelters to provide this to people that are experiencing this, and more shelters in general, not just for families, but for every walk of life. It doesn’t discriminate. So every walk of life that’s experiencing this, just being able to give people hope when they’re struggling to find it within themselves.
Chávez I know we’ve been talking about challenges today, but I would love to hear about some of these successes, too. How does it feel to be able to help families transition out of one of your shelters? Do you remember any family’s experiences that were meaningful to you, Adrianna?
Kofoed: Absolutely. Oh, it has been the greatest joy of my life to be able to experience … I’m sorry.
Chávez: You’re OK. You’re OK.
Kofoed: It’s been one of the greatest joys of my life to walk alongside a family and ultimately see the goal through to the end. I haven’t been here a whole lot, but I have recently been a part of a handful of families, a couple of which have been in shelter for longer than I have even been here, who I walked alongside them through very high highs and very low lows to see it through to the end. But it’s incredible having conversations with a little girl that gets to take a bath in her own house for the very first time in her life. That’s just one of the stories that really stuck with me. There was another single mom that we were able to get housed recently, who lives in her own place with her daughter for the very first time ever in her life. She [never] had a place, even as a child, that was safe, that was stable and that she didn’t have to leave if something came up. There are so many different stories and it’s been an incredible journey.
Chávez: Well, Adrianna and Gracie, thank you so much for being here and sharing about your experience.
Kofoed: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us.
Chávez: Thank you.
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