Chronic illness, work loss, eviction hit family of 5

The pandemic has hit Christy and her family hard, but she’s hoping Operation Holiday can come through with a little extra holiday cheer to close out a tough year.

“The past few years, the father of my three children has been sick, and he’s been getting significantly worse,” she said.

“When COVID hit, I got a reduction in pay, along with some hours. I tried to get unemployment relief, but wasn’t approved for that, for whatever reason.”

Working on roughly half of her normal income for several months, Christy said, she and her family started getting behind on bills, and his doctor’s appointments started interfering with his work schedule.

“In August, we finally found a doctor, who figured out he had Celiac disease the entire time. That explained the hospital visits, and everything else, because everything he’s been eating has literally been killing him, because it has gluten,” she said.

“The problem is, because of the reduction in pay, and he lost his job because he was trying to figure out what was wrong, we called our landlord to inform him that we couldn’t make a payment,” Christy said.

That call eventually led to their landlord and its management company starting eviction proceedings, in early October, on short notice.

“We had three hours to decide.

“We’re kind of a humble family. We’re just happy that we’re together.” _Christy

When you have three children, that is not a lot of time, so we decided to leave, to try to protect our renter history,” she said.

“My sister actually was evicted once, and it has followed her around for the past eight years. I didn’t want that on our record, because we would like to buy a house eventually.”

Christy, the father, and their three children — who are three years old, one, and the youngest was born this past summer — found themselves spending their nights in shelters, from Pottstown to Phoenixville, and are currently living in a hotel while looking for options. The father did serve in the Army, so the VA may be able to help with housing, but that doesn’t look likely until the new year, so the holidays this month will be unlike any the family have had before.

“We definitely aren’t decorating a tree, or anything like that. There’s one or two organizations that are putting gifts together for the children, but other than that, we’re probably going to be in a hotel, and we can’t go see family at all,” she said.

What do the kids want for Christmas? “They’re so young, they don’t know what they want. My oldest is obsessed with dinosaurs, to the point where he actually can almost say ‘Triceratops,’” said Christy.

“The youngest boy is already pretending to go to school. He’ll pick up his book bag, and say ‘Bye bye, Mama, bye bye.’ My oldest loves to draw, with colored pencils, and my youngest prefers crayons, that’s about it,” she said.

Trying to keep up with rent meant the family fell behind on other bills, which hurt their credit, and may mean more trouble finding their next place to live, but as long as the five are all in the same place, they know they’ll be OK.

“There were a lot of organizations we were going to have to face that would’ve separated us, and I didn’t want that,” said Christy, whose name has been changed to protect their identities.

“We’re kind of a humble family. We’re just happy that we’re together.”

Now in its 30th year, Operation Holiday has provided a brighter holiday season to thousands of families with children throughout the region. Donations from readers last year totaled more than $35,000 and allowed the program to provide food and gifts for 107 families with 325 children in need.

This year, 15 agencies in Montgomery and Chester counties have referred families in need, many of them affected by the devastation of the global pandemic. Stories of families interviewed by our reporters will appear in the newspaper and online between now and December 24.

Also this year due to the hardship in our communities caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Operation Holiday will make cash donations to local food pantries so that families will have access to food during the winter months.

There is no overhead with Operation Holiday and all funds stay local. Funds are collected and audited in a nonprofit foundation account managed by staff of MediaNews Group.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings, the food packaging program will not take place this year. Families instead will be given gift cards for food in addition to the gift cards for gifts.

Gift cards for every child in the program 16 years of age or younger are purchased through Boscov’s and distributed in partnership with the referring agencies.

Operation Holiday does not accept families who have not been referred by an agency in order to protect the integrity of the program.

Operation Holiday is funded solely by readers’ contributions. All contributions are tax deductible.

Contributions can be mailed to The Mercury, Attn: Operation Holiday, PO Box 1181, Pottstown, PA 19464, or The Reporter, 307 Derstine Ave., Lansdale PA 19446. Make checks payable to “Operation Holiday.” Online donations are being accepted in a secure portal in partnership with TriCounty Community Network. Visit https://tcnetwork.org/ and click on the link for Operation Holiday.