Living as an unhoused single woman
Desperation, addiction 2 of the difficult challenges
CHICO » To live as a single woman without a roof in Chico for the better part of a decade, Mary Childers said she’s learned how to rely on others — but is discouraged about the difficulty of finding work as an unhoused person.
Childers, 40, lives in Humboldt Park along Humboldt Avenue in Chico. She has now been unsheltered for 10 years, having moved to the city when she was just married to a local, from Craig, Colorado.
“I owned my own home, worked at a liquor store,” Childers said. Then she met her future husband in Oregon.
But when they arrived in Chico, she said her partner’s parents would not allow them to stay with them.
“His family said they have a place to stay, so we came here,” she said. “My dad had just passed away earlier that year in Colorado.”
“We get here and they say no, you can’t stay here. So we were immediately out on the streets.” That was in 2011, she said.
So they lived in a van, but her children were taken away from her in October 2011 when neighbors suspected substance use, when they were aged 10 and 14. Childers and her husband also lost an apartment they had been waiting for.
Childers said she eventually separated from her husband in spring 2012.
“(I’ve) been out here ever since,” she said. “I know a lot of people out here now.”
“Not everyone out here chooses to be, and not everyone out here are all drug addicts,” Childers added. She said she got clean three years ago, aside from smoking, after about 10 years as an addict.
“It’s a battle,” she said. “Because it’s way easier when you’re out here to get high.
“$20 in food is going to last one meal. $20 in drugs is going to last you two or three days, and you’re not going to be hungry.”
She said she got motivated to get clean when her children said she could not see her grandchildren if she was still using drugs. Her two offspring who live in California are now 20 and 24 with children of their own.
“Whether you’re in a house or not, if you’re not ready to do something, you’re not going to do it,” she said. “An addiction’s an addiction, whether you’re inside or outside.”
Surviving
Childers said she continues to look for work, but has become discouraged about what she feels are stigmas against unhoused people seeking work, echoed by others camping in the area.
“Give us a chance to get a job, because nobody wants to hire somebody when they got a Jesus Center address … they look at us like we’re a disease,” she said.
“I’m not a disease, I’m a person, just like the next person.”
Childers has known folks looking for part time jobs who found work but were soon fired when bosses discovered they were unhoused.
And she said over and over again when looking for work in the area, management will deny they are hiring.
“You get shut down so many times that you don’t want to do it (apply) anymore,” she said. “You’d rather not feel the hatred toward you. ‘Cause that’s what it feels like, they hate you.”
Childers sometimes collects cans for money, and routinely reapplies for food stamps as well. Canning only yields about $20 a week for her, as she said she hates going into a dumpster.
Another camp mate cans constantly and makes about $45-$50 per day if he is always doing it all day long, she added.
She’s also used local nonprofit organizations for services.
“I’m not good with great big crowds of people … I have my own space here,” Childers said, gesturing at the green at the park where others have arranged their tents with some distance apart. She is proud of keeping her camping space neat and organized, and showed off the elaborate tent house she has constructed with two other people, with parts of different tents walled off to create private rooms and a kitchen.
Living single and mostly alone up to this point, she has owned two dogs for protection in the past.
Now, “I sleep all day and I stay up all night, so I can watch my stuff,” Childers said. However, she said at this point she isn’t really afraid of any area in Chico, having stayed in most places at this point.
Or, she will use the buddy system, and get to know her neighbors, like Marlee Piver, who lives with her husband in the next tent over. It’s necessary to protect each other, from the elements and from harassment from passersby.
“Too many people have died freezing to death out here. There’s no reason to be that cold,” she said.
Facing eviction
Childers and other campers still at Humboldt Park say they are tired of being moved from different city lots and do not know where they can legally stay next.
“I’m tired of losing everything — every time you turn around, the cops are taking everything or somebody’s stealing it,” she said. “And the cops take everything. They come and they tell you, ‘you have to leave, you have to leave,’ and they’re taking everything and throw it in the dumpster.
“They don’t care if it’s personal property,” she added.
Chico police have told the E-R they hold and store any property they determine is “of reasonable value” at the police station. Other unhoused individuals have said their stored property could not be reclaimed or very few items were returned to them by police.
Yet Childers claimed in the last year, she’s actually been moved by police less often, with property taken or removed, than in the past. She said when the shelter-athome order was in place and everybody stayed in their tents in one area, she said harassment got much worse, as people would come by tents “screaming and throwing things and shooting bottle rockets out of ‘cannons.’”
“It made a lot of people want to leave. Me, it just made me want to sit there and ‘post up’ longer,” she laughed.
But if she gets moved again, Childers said she has no idea where she can legally move to, and wishes it were possible for people to respect that what she has, she is trying to keep clean.
“I guess I want most people to realize, they’re only a paycheck away from being here too. They miss that paycheck, they’re going to be right here next to us.”
“I’m so tired of picking up and moving,” she said.
As of Wednesday, Childers and most other campers were still at Humboldt Park. She and several other campers said Chico police officers had come Monday to tell campers they would soon be back with 72-hour written notices to leave or be evicted.
Chico Police Department’s Captain Greg Keeney said Thursday this did take place, and confirmed “We will likely be issuing written 72 hour notices next week.”
Contact reporter Natalie Hanson at 530-896-7763.