Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A home and hope for the holidays
FORT LAUDERDALE — Christmas has always meant a tree aglow for Angel Floyd and her two daughters, but it hasn’t always been in a place of their own.
Two years ago, unforeseen circumstances pushed them out of their Davie apartment into the homes of friends who had room for them and then into the Salvation Army’s transitional housing program. But that appears firmly in the past. Now they live in a two-bedroom apartment in a central Fort Lauderdale neighborhood.
“We’ve been here since August,” Floyd, 37, said looking around at decorations that include exhortations of faith and hope.
She’s been working as a teacher since her college graduation more than a decade ago, but didn’t have the cash available for a deposit on a new place when a change in the ownership of her unit unexpectedly forced her to leave a Davie apartment. She works at the Grace Academy International in Opalocka, where both her daughters, Tasia,
13, and Tierra, 11, are enrolled.
“What really pushed me behind the gun was me not working during the summer,” she explained.
She said she feels fortunate that she got into the Salvation Army’s Plymouth Colony program that gives families a place to stay up to two years while they address the underlying issues that led to their homelessness.
The Salvation Army last year helped 117 families that included 217 children in the Plymouth Colony program. Another 52 people went through the Salvation Army’s transitional housing. And 1,149 chronically homeless got a safe place to sleep through the agency’s Open Door Shelter. And they also gave out 17,503 warm meals last year.
The Salvation Army is supported by the Sun Sentinel Children's Fund, a McCormick Foundation fund, which benefits South Florida nonprofit organizations that help local families and children in need.
Friends and reliable transportation kept Floyd afloat during that uncertain period. She credits the agency with giving her the tools to make sure the future will be stable. She met with a case manager regularly.
“They taught me how to save, how to budget and not live above my means,” she said.
Now, their home is a place her daughters’ friends gather. The girls are involved in dance classes and take drama lessons. Her older daughter, Tasia, is doing well in school and will be poised to graduate from high school with an associate’s degree, she said.
Her experience has rekindled her desire to help children in difficult circumstances. She said she’s dreaming of the day she might open her own school, or maybe a group home for foster children.
“Everyone deserves a a chance,” she said.