Hear from Elizabeth: Housing, invisible families, and finding home
Bay Area resident Elizabeth Herrera’s story is about housing, invisible families and finding home.
Elizabeth’s story is part of the Families Finding Home podcast.
The excerpts from the film What You’ll Remember were provided by filmmakers Erika Cohn and Marcia Jarmel. You can watch for free at hamiltonfamilies.org/what-youll-remember.
_____
Transcript
LISA RUDMAN
Are you listening to this at home, or maybe in your car? What if your home and your car were the same place?
ELIZABETH HERRERA
When I think back to the times we had to live in the car… We figured out that if we would stay two nights in the car and then get a hotel room, shower, get everybody, you know, all ready, everything, and do two nights in a car, like we were able to save a little bit that way.
I’m Elizabeth Herrera, married to David Lima. We have four children together: David Jr. is 13, Ezekiel who's 12, Gabriel who’s nine, and Robyn who's four.
We're living here at Hamilton Families right now.
LISA
Hamilton Families is an agency that supports homeless families with services and transitional housing. Before they moved here, Elizabeth's family spent 15 years without a stable place to stay.
I'm Lisa Rudman, and I'm teaming up with Elizabeth Herrera to bring you her family's story.
In San Francisco, there are super high rents and very little affordable housing. COVID-19 increased unemployment and evictions. Even before the pandemic, African American and Latinx families were at the center of the housing crisis.
So, this story, Elizabeth's story, is about housing, invisible families, and finding home.
ELIZABETH
You're invisible because of the fact that you're like I said not out in the streets, you're not in a tent, you're not at a shelter, and, at the same time, you kind of want to be invisible because you're scared of what can happen because you have kids, so you're like, you don't want to be noticed right away so, you're trying to keep up appearances as much as you can that things are okay. So, you're trying harder than ever to make sure everybody's close are washed, make sure everybody's fed, make sure everybody's asleep at a certain time.
A lot of families were like us that we met along the way, that were in the rest stops and in campsites that were just in the middle of waiting.
There was points where we were on lists and we were waiting and you know we were like, “oh hey we’ve switched and we're at a motel now, we got a motel for a week,” and they would tell us like, “well now you're bumped down the list because you're inside, you have, you know, housing over you,” like, oh man maybe we shouldn't have said anything.
Yeah, I understand, you know, there's lots of people who need help there's lots of things that are going on. You know, you have priority are given to people who have substance abuse issues, or domestic violence issues, or, you know, they have court orders or CPS cases they have to take care of. So, all those people are taken in, you know, right away, priority, and the rest of the people waiting on the list are having a, you know, call-in, check-in every week and letting them know, “yeah we're still in the street, yeah we're still in the street,” but weeks and weeks go by.
LISA
Meanwhile, as the six of them waited, and living in their car, they were still working and going to school.
In the US, a third of the overall homeless population are families. That includes more than one and a half million children.
ELIZABETH
A lot of families are really close to being in similar situations without even knowing it themselves, like if people really stopped and thought about like, “what would happen if I lost my job today,” you know, “how long could I continue living the way that I'm living now?” I feel like a lot of people don't really take that into consideration because they're so caught up in their everyday life.
People tend to, you know, look at you like, “wow, how did this happen,” you know, or like you know, “how did you get yourself into the situation,” and it's like, it's, it's so easy. You lose your job, then you can't pay your rent, you're given an eviction notice right, now you have nowhere to go.
LISA
Elizabeth and her husband, David Lima, both grew up without stable housing. Back then, kids without parents only got support up to age 18, and then they were on their own.
ELIZABETH
Well, I think for both of us, just because of the way we grew up, I guess you would consider us chronically homeless. We didn't have our parents with us, either one of us, and we were bounced around between family members, you know we came with a check and food stamps.
Whoever was willing to watch us, had us, and then it kind of got to the point where we were already 18 and, you know, nobody wants to just take care of 18-year-olds so both of us kind of ended up on the path where we were just bouncing around between like friends’ houses and really know where to go, and that's how we met because we both ended up Job Corps which was like the, you know, they had a live-in program, you could go to school and get a certificate, and we were probably a couple of the only people there that weren't there because of like a court case or being you know forced by their parents, like we really were like we have nowhere to go and this seems like a good idea, and that's where we ended up meeting each other.
He got his diploma, I got my GED, we graduated. We tried to move out and get a place.
So, you're like let me go to a motel, which can add up really fast if you stop and check you know weekly rates and monthly rates and from staying somewhere like that and next, maybe you're spending more gas money because you're traveling further because the motel you're at and then now you're spending money eating out all the time because you don't have a kitchen to cook in or to keep food in.
Essentially, you completely lose your ability to save anything at that point because everything is being used. Sometimes you're even starting to go into debt because you don't have enough so you're like, well let me get this payday loan, or let me get you know whatever it is just to get through and before you know it you're just stuck in a place where you're like well it's either you know we have to sleep in a car or do something else that's going to be the only way to save any money or try to get anywhere and you get on all these lists for these places and, you know, a lot of people don't realize either to get this help you can't be staying in a motel, you can't be staying at you know your parents’ house in the garage or on the living room floor, they don't count that as emergency or qualifying as homeless.
After David and I got together, we started to grow our family. We struggled to find housing and create a good life for our kids. We just try to make the best of the continually changing living situation. We were living in the car, and we had nowhere to go. We never said like we're homeless people sleeping in the car. We called it car camping. Every day we were going to a new park. We were seeing a new place. We made it an adventure. We’d get ready in the bathroom at the rest stop before school and work.
Those last comments of mine were from a short New York Times Op-Docs film called “What You'll Remember,” by Marcia Jarmel and Erica Cohn. I received a cinematography credit for it since I filmed it all from my iPhone. It centers around a letter that I wrote to our kids for the future.
I started this letter for you guys many times. There's so much I want to say, it's hard to know where to start. I hope you guys don't remember the stress. I hope you don't remember the fighting. It's easy to dwell on those things. Your positivity and your spirit just, it's always there and it's contagious and it helps us get through everything. Never forget that home, it's not a building. Home is where your family and the people you love are.
LISA
Elizabeth's family is finally receiving the support they've been looking for. David's job is going well. Elizabeth is taking classes, and, for the first time, they have a little savings. They're at Hamilton Families | Transitional Housing, for now.
ELIZABETH
Now we're in this three-bedroom apartment, you know, the boys have their own rooms, Robyn has her own little area out in the living room, we have our own bedroom, like there's so much space.
It's just such a relief to finally have the help that you've been waiting for and have been hoping for and kind of gave up thinking even existed, and now it's the feeling of being able to breathe and be like look it's going to be okay.
It's definitely been a physical release as well as mental to just be able to not have to be hyped up all day worrying about the night, worrying about what's going to happen, you know being able to sleep soundly, and not worry about you know someone's going to knock on your window, or if you're, if there’s going to be a fight in the hallway of the motel you're at, or just all these things that are going through your head when you're out there like that, to just be able to breathe and to sleep.
I know a lot of people don't make it to this point that we've made it to because it's… a lot, and it's hard, and it's really sad to see a lot of the families and a lot of people that I knew along the way that you know have lost things and haven't been able to get through the struggle, and I feel really fortunate for us, and I know the kids feel fortunate too for sure.
Even with as amazing as our time at Hamilton has been, the stability it's been able to provide, the programs they've had for our children, the ability to have a savings account for once, we're so grateful for, but the future is still uncertain. There's no existing programs for families quite like ours.
The road ahead of us is definitely going to be challenging.
LISA
That was Elizabeth Herrera, a mom, and a new media maker.
You've been listening to “Families Finding Home.” This episode, entitled “Elizabeth,” was produced by Lisa Rudman and Elizabeth Herrera with support from the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC Media), Hamilton Families, and Google.org.
Our Executive Producer is Paula Smith Arrigoni. Cory Winter is producer for Hamilton Families.
The excerpts from the film, “What You'll Remember,” were provided by filmmakers Erica Cohn and Marcia Jarmel. You can watch for free online at New York Times Op-Docs page, that's nytimes.com/video/op-docs.
You can find more episodes of this podcast at BAVC’s website, that's bavc.org, and at hamiltonfamilies.org.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima, and their kids: David Jr., Ezekiel, Gabriel, and Robyn. Thanks to Nico Opper, Elaine Beale, and Diane Livia.
Our music today was by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.