Tammy
Tammy Jeffries is close to completing five months at a family shelter in the Bronx. She has no complaints about the staff; she gives them credit for “going the distance to help you out.” She wants to leave as soon as possible for a very different reason. As long as she is in the shelter, she can’t return to work. And considering that she earned about $45,000 as an insurance broker in Manhattan until just a few months ago, she is understandably anxious to regain her job – and her independence.

Jeffries lost her apartment in a battle against New York’s cramped real estate market. Even with her salary, she could not meet her landlord’s spiraling rent demands. She sought assistance from housing court, lost, and was evicted from her apartment along with her three children.

A single mother, she learned about the Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU) and utilized it as soon as she could get out of work and put away her belongings in storage. Similar to the positive account that she gives about her current shelter – where she has been working closely with Care for the Homeless’ senior social worker, Lynnette Verges – she recalls her 10-day stay at the EAU to also be a relatively agreeable experience. As she says: “It wasn’t that bad because they were aware that I worked. By the time I got back to the EAU in the evening, our names were being called for overnight placement. We would be back around 6am and off to school and work. So we still maintained our routine.” While she has heard some very unpleasant stories about overnight shelters, she feels fortunate to have been sent to clean and comfortable facilities.

But while Jeffries didn’t face any problems with her living situations, she found herself cut off from most of the social services available. Her well-paying job, which she had continued even during her homelessness, labeled her as middle-income and disqualified her from many services. “I am homeless. I have three children. I am a single mother. So what makes me middle-income?” she questions. “There was no assistance for me because of the money I was being paid. You are not eligible for housing. You are not eligible for programs that most people are. The government says, ‘You are working, so you are on your own and we can’t help you.’”

The most critical issue for Jeffries was that her income made her ineligible to receive housing assistance in order to get out of the shelter system. She says she was faced with only two options: “They said either find a place on your own or quit [your job]. If you quit, you will become eligible.” Backed into a corner, she left her position as an insurance broker in April of this year.

Losing her employment and earnings, she was now able to qualify for housing assistance. But, in a perfect Catch-22, she could not move into subsidized housing without a source of income. So she turned to the welfare system for assistance. But four months after leaving her job, she still has not received any entitlements.

Jeffries is now awaiting a fair hearing appointment to advocate for her right to entitlements and to get one step closer to securing permanent housing. In addition, she wants to get back to work. “I am good at what I do. I have companies that want to hire me right away. But as long as I am in here, I can’t do it,” she remarks. That’s because the moment she starts working again, her income will disqualify her for subsidized housing. As a result, she’s trying to get an apartment within the projects—but not under Section 8. Staying in the projects will allow her to earn the income she is qualified for and to pay rent. With Section 8, however, she would be out on the streets almost as soon as she moves in because her salary would exceed the income requirements for this program.

Protesting the difficulties she faced as a working, homeless person, she notes: “They have programs for people that don’t do anything with their lives, whether it is by choice or not. It seems like it becomes a lot harder if you work. And that’s unfair because you feel like you have to let your job go to get some help. It’s almost like you are penalized if you work.”

Jeffries says her life is on hold for now; she can’t start working again until she finds an apartment and she can’t find an apartment until she gets approved for public assistance. But in spite of this, the optimism that marked her view of the EAU and her Bronx shelter is also evident in her outlook toward her present situation. As she puts it: “If you are going to sit and wait, you are going to be here forever. Sometimes you have to be a little annoying to get things enforced. And I am not waiting. I am ready to go.”

See other stories at "Homeless Voices."