Faith And The City :: Issues :: Social Environment

During their ordeal with homelessness, Angie Aikens kept her college-bound children focused on their schoolwork. From left: Samantha, 17; Angie; Allen, 13; Michael, 16.

Congregations join Faith And The City to help families escape homelessness

Homeless. It was a place Angie Aikens never expected to be. Homeless only happened to other people. Not to Angie and her children. After all, Angie had worked steady in good jobs since she was 18, for more than 25 years, taking time off only when each of her three children was born. And she was still working fulltime every day. But there she was, with her three teenagers, living in an emergency shelter at the United Methodist Children’s Home in Decatur.

It started in the spring of 2004 when a series of unpredictable events turned Angie’s otherwise stable and secure life upside down. Her husband lost his job. With her income alone, they soon were behind on their rent. Before long, the family had to move in with Angie’s sister. Angie and her husband separated that fall. A short while later, her sister lost the house, and Angie and the kids found themselves in a motel for a month and a half – a very expensive way to keep a roof over her family’s head. But she chose the motel because emergency shelters available at the time would have separated her and her teenage daughter from the two teenage sons.

By December, Angie and the kids were accepted at the Children’s Home emergency shelter, an apartment-style environment that provided at least a temporary reprieve from living on the street.

“The hardest part for me was knowing that I could not provide for my children. I guess it was the shame that I felt,” Angie recalled later. “I was always the strong one who helped others. So when I fell down I felt that I needed to pick myself up.” She discovered, however, that she could not do so alone and, by God’s grace, others would reach out to her.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Angie maintained her employment with the DeKalb County Department of Family and Children Services, where she had worked continuously since 2000. During her stay of several months at the Children’s Home shelter, she managed to save enough money to begin looking for a permanent home.

Angie’s determination to hold onto her job proved critical. Because she was a gainfully employed head of household, her family met a basic requirement for the Mentor A Family Program at Faith And The City. In its fifth year, Mentor A Family matches congregations and other organizations with working homeless families in mentoring relationships for a minimum of six months. Each congregation provides moral support, advice and, on occasion, limited financial assistance. The nature and extent of support always depends on the resources of the congregation.

By April of 2005, Angie had found a home to rent and was matched with Cascade United Methodist Church, a well-established congregation in Southwest Atlanta. Cascade’s representatives provided a great deal of encouragement for Angie and her family, as well as a variety of cookware, dishes, bedding, and other goods and house wares, freeing Angie’s income for other family needs.

When Angie’s car required $2,000 in repairs, Cascade came through with help on her rent so that she would not get behind. The six-month commitment that Cascade made to Angie and her family has since come and gone. But, she still hears regularly from her primary contacts – Michael Rawls and Roseanne Nurse, co-chairs of Cascade’s Christian Doorkeepers Ministry.

“The Aikens family was a blessing to us because they gave us a chance to reach out to a family and serve our community,” Michael Rawls said. “Everybody needs help. You can’t make it by yourself in this life.”

Today, Angie and her three college-bound teenagers have returned to a stable and secure lifestyle, and they are sharing their lives and their home with Angie’s 9-year-old niece. Like many of life’s trials, homelessness for Angie proved to be a journey of faith – one that drew her family closer to one another and to God.

“I always thought of myself as a strong woman who God called to help others. The last thing I expected was to be homelessness myself,” Angie said. “I gained humility and learned how to ask for help as well as give it – and that makes my faith stronger than ever before.”

The Faith And The City Mentor A Family Program assists working homeless families as they prepare to move out of family shelters, transitional housing, and extended stay hotels to become self-sufficient in affordable permanent housing. Families are matched with local congregations and other organizations that provide a range of support and moral encouragement as each family transitions back into mainstream life. The program has assisted more than 1,000 individuals, mostly women and children. More than half of these clients have been served since January 2005, when the program came under the auspices of Faith And The City. Since Hurricane Katrina, the Mentor A Family Program has extended its reach to assist dozens of families evacuated from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities.

For more information, contact Margie Shannon Telfair, program manager for Mentor A Family, at 404.523.5554, ext. 230, or mtelfair@faithandthecity.org.