LOS ANGELES — As students prepare to head back to class, many are doing so without a home to call their own. LAUSD staff say they don’t yet have an exact number for the increase in homeless students enrolled this fall, but according to the California Department of Education, more than 7,500 students enrolled in LAUSD for the 2021 to 2022 school year were considered homeless.
Eight-year-old Aiden was one of them. Spectrum News 1 first met his family back in 2021 when they moved from an outdoor shed to a shelter that was only supposed to be temporary.
This was her first day off from her job cooking at the burger joint in weeks, so his mother, Antoinnyca Daniels, cooked a full course meal for Aiden and his little sister, Amor.
“You guys have fish, salmon croquette, smothered potatoes, cornbread," she said.
She cooks as often as she can, not just for her kiddos, but for the five other women and their kids that she lives with in shared housing funded by HOPICS, which stands for Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System.
Before they moved into this shelter, Daniels and her two kids were living in their car and even an outdoor shed. But even when they didn’t have a roof over their head, the single mom raised the 8- and 3-year-old to see the good in everyday and everyone.
"Everyone is beautiful how they are," Aiden reminded one of the women who also lives at the shelter as she left.
Now, it’s been almost a year since they moved in and Daniels said she still hasn’t been able to find housing, nor has she heard back from the housing coordinators at HOPICS.
“Hopefully they have something good to say about the status now that I’m working," she said as she washed the dishes.
While she got dressed to go there, Amor and Aiden played outside with the man who welcomed them home at this shelter, the CEO of Sustainable Futures Project, Eric Jones.
He says he opened this shelter to give single mothers with young children a safe place to escape domestic violence, homelessness and other traumas because getting a job, housing and everything it takes to be self-sufficient doesn’t happen overnight. Jones said this shelter bridges that gap.
“I started this because I seen the devastation of the children, so I said, if I help the mothers, the children will be good," Jones explained. "A lot of them come here shocked, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, DV, all kinds of stuff, so you dont know what's in an individual, until you wrap your arms around them and listen and find out what's a goal plan for them?"
As the kids get ready to go back to class, a goal for Antoinnyca is to start the new school year somewhere they can call their own, but she says it’s been impossible to find.
According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, renters need to earn $38.28 an hour, which is 2.5 times the minimum wage, to afford average rent in LA.
A recent report also shows LA County needs nearly 500,000 affordable housing units to meet the need.
It's a demand so high, Antoinnyca left HOPICS without very many answers.
“They said they’re gonna call me to see if they submitted an application for the Section 8 or the low income housing," she said.
But even as they hit yet another road block, Antoinnyca is holding on to hope and wants her story to inspire others to do the same.
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