Mattanika Kirksey has a family and job, but no place to live. She has taken her children, one of them a newborn, to the Gateway Homeless Shelter.
“My landlord took the rent up. And I was working, or whatever, but I just couldn’t keep it,” she said.
Kirksey is not alone. In St. Louis, 15 percent of the homeless hold jobs. Homeless advocates fear that number has grown. Pamela Truelove is in the same boat. She is currently living at the YWCA.
Truelove lost her old job and now works part-time, but she said that is not enough to make ends meet. She believes she will be put on full-time, and then maybe her luck will change. Until then, Truelove hopes to have a place and a comfort level for paying her bills.
But for the working homeless, the struggle Truelove goes through daily has become a way of life. Some working homeless may spend 60 hours a week toiling at minimum-wage jobs. The experts say those people cannot sustain enough money to offset the rising costs of housing.
Dan Buck, Executive Director of the St. Patrick’s Center in St. Louis, said the number of homeless in St. Louis has actually gone down as of late. But now experts worry that with a troubled economy, the number will grow.
In Reno, Nevada there are tent cities for the homeless. In Boston, resources are so taxed that some without places to live are putting people in motels. Some in St. Louis wonder whether our city will be next.
For now, experts are bracing for bad news but hope for the best. The best is yet to come for Kirksey, who just found out she’s eligible for Section Eight Housing. Truelove hopes for the same. She said she’ll work as many jobs as she has to for a place of her own.
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