Paloma

Paloma was a new mother. She had just had her daughter and they were homeless, moving from shelter to shelter. “I was just trying to, you know, find jobs and, you know, I was homeless. I had nowhere to go, no family basically helping me, so I was pretty much on my own. Uh, so, I had to just figure it out little by little, you know.” Constantly moving created challenges for employment as well as childcare. Often when they moved she wouldn’t be able to keep her job, and she would move away from childcare. She tells us, “It was really hard. It was complicated”.

She was shocked when she got the call about the $1,000. She had just gotten an apartment with the help of a shelter. She would have liked to save the money but, “the money was used just to survive.” Paloma had a lot of ups and downs throughout the three years, moving multiple times, losing jobs, and an unplanned pregnancy that she made the difficult decision to place in adoption for financial reasons. Nevertheless, Paloma feels optimistic about the future. At the end of the program she has stable housing for her and her daughter, is going to school again, and has a job lined up.