UNSHELTERED
With more families dragged into poverty, more children live in unstable homes
EDITOR’S NOTE: Homelessness is on the rise in Hot Springs. In the second installment of a three-part weekly series, The Sentinel-Record takes an indepth look at the problem as it relates to children.
The toughest day of the school counselor’s career was the day she had to visit a shed hidden behind a house.
The shed had no electricity. No running water. No heat. What it did have was a family, including three young children and an infant, living inside.
They used a makeshift latrine behind the shed and got water from a spigot attached to a nearby home. The counselor, who works at a local school district and requested her name not be used out of concern the family is still living in the Hot Springs area, learned of their situation after the parents brought dirty clothes to the school as they had nowhere to wash them.
Eventually, the parents told the counselor about the shed. “How many more (children) are living in situations like this?” said the counselor, who broke down in tears as she described the family in the shed. “I would be scared to know how many there are that we don’t know about.”
The increasing poverty and homelessness in Hot Springs are obviously concerning. What is even more concerning is the number of children growing up in poor households here.
Similar to the adult homeless population, it is difficult to get an accurate count of the children who may be living in cars, in hotels, on the streets, or on someone else’s couch. The federal government requires every school district in the country to have an employee work as a designated liaison to keep track of students who are homeless.
As of April 2018, Lakeside School District has 91 students documented as homeless. Lake Hamilton has 58 in the district. Hot Springs has 280. A 2018 count of homeless individuals in Garland County, which takes place annually in January, tallied 410 youths without places to live. The year before, that number was 429. Three of the seven school districts in Garland County did not turn in numbers for the count in 2018.
While some parents are upfront about their situation, many do not inform counselors that they do not have a stable household out of fear that child services might get involved and take their children away.
“Parents don’t report it because they are afraid,” Gina Rockwell, the homeless liaison for Lakeside School District, said. “We have students who live in hotels. We had one who lived with his mom in a car.”
Arkansas is among the 10 worst states for child poverty, according to a study from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a nonprofit. In 2016, the state had 184,000 children living in poverty, the study said. More than 6,400 children in Garland County live below the federal poverty line, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.
Numerous studies have found that growing up poor not only directly impacts a child’s ability to perform in school but also hinders brain development. “These kids are not worried about math or reading,” Renae Carrouth, homeless liaison for Lake Hamilton School District, said. “They are worried about what is going to happen when they get out of school. They are worried about basic needs.”
Nearly 50 percent of students at Lakeside and Lake Hamilton school districts are on free or reduced lunches. At Hot Springs School District, all students receive free breakfast and lunch. Of the nearly 4,000 students in the Hot Springs district, over 80 percent are designated as low income.
“Poverty is the bottom line,” Sue Legal, a director with the Ouachita Children’s Center, an emergency shelter for homeless youth, said. “Everything shoots off of that.”
OCC launched an outreach team in January to try to connect with children who are living on the streets. Legal said the team has found evidence of children staying in abandoned buildings and houses. So far, the team has given out about 50 survival packs with snacks, towels, flashlights and other supplies.
“I know that those homeless kids on the street are falling through the cracks,” Legal said. “I know that we are not serving all the ones that we could.”
What some experts say they find even more concerning is the fact that kids who do not have a place to live, or even those living in poverty, can very quickly become victims of human trafficking, which can include being coerced to work as prostitutes, to sell drugs or other forms of forced labor.
There are cases of children as young as 12 being forced into prostitution in the area, Melisa Glenn, chair of the Human Trafficking Task Force of Garland County, said, adding that statistics indicate that within 48 hours of being out on the street, one out of every three runaway youths will be sexually exploited, usually for profit.
“We know we are just touching the surface of what is going on,” Glenn said. “There is abuse that we cannot even try to understand.”
While Hot Springs has emergency shelters for children, including OCC and Hillcrest Children’s Home, these facilities are only able to do so much. Professionals who work directly with homeless children say the overwhelming issue in the community is there is simply nowhere for families to go if they end up on the street.
School districts may offer families money to stay in hotel rooms for a couple of nights or to pay utility bills. Lake Hamilton and Hot Springs have resource centers where families can get free food and clothing, do laundry and use the internet. But without an emergency shelter or some type of transitional housing option, it can be almost impossible for a family to get back on its feet.
“I think we grossly underestimate how many homeless we have in this community,” Erika Cross, the homeless liaison for Hot Springs School District, said. “I don’t think people understand we need affordable housing, that we need beds. When I deal with families who are truly homeless, I encourage them to go to Little Rock to get ahead because it doesn’t happen here.”