CLEVELAND — Housing insecurity across the state has been on the rise since the pandemic, according to data from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.

Access Shelter in Akron said the average resident is staying in the shelter for triple the time as before 2020. After spending a year in their facility, one resident, Kyrah Whatley, is now on the path to stability.

Whatley works full time as a paraprofessional at the middle school she attended in Akron.

She doesn’t have a car, so her grandma drops her off at work each morning.

A single mom to five, Whatley has her hands full, even outside of work.

“Some days are gonna be exhausting,” Whatley said. “But at the end of the day, my kids and I are here. They really are my biggest blessings. And they are quite funny.”

This job has provided Whatley with a bit of stability, but she went through a lot before getting here.

She said a few years ago, while she was pregnant with her youngest child, two of her kids got lead poisoning in their rental, so they had to move out, leaving them homeless.

They eventually found their way to Access Shelter in Akron.

“I ain’t gonna lie. I dreaded that decision since I made that phone call,” she said. “I’ve never been through something like that before, and I definitely didn’t want to go through that with my children with me.”

Whatley and her kids spent more than a year at Access, which was not easy on her family.

“It was very, very challenging because my kids were so used to their own, their own space, their own just everything,” she said. “Like it didn’t matter what I went through, I’ve always made sure that my kids had everything that I didn’t have growing up, so they were just used to it. And then for everything to pretty much kind of get snatched away, it was hard.”

Access is a shelter specifically for women and children experiencing homelessness.

Jackie Hemsworth is the Executive Director and said women come there for a variety of reasons, but the ultimate goal is always to find residents their own permanent housing.

“It’s really the primary building block for all of the great things that are to come for everybody that we serve,” Hemsworth said. “While people might be working while they’re here in shelter, it’s so much more difficult than when you have your own home.”

Hemsworth said there’s always a waiting list for the services they provide, and the need from the community has only grown post-pandemic.

“The length of time that people are staying in shelter has tripled since the beginning of the pandemic,” she said. “So, people are staying here longer because of the landscape of housing in our community. So unfortunately, it takes a little longer for people to get into our shelter now.”

The employees at the shelter supported Whatley through her pregnancy and eventually helped land her the job and permanent housing for her family.

Whatley said she feels better but is still stressed often.

Having a home to go back to at the end of the day helps her make it through.

“First thing I want to do, I ain’t even gone lie, is kick my shoes off,” Whatley said. “And I run up and down the steps with the kids. I don’t care. Do you know how long it’s been since we had? Okay, you don’t know how long it’s been since we had stairs. But we do we do we kind of, we play a lot more.”

She said she encourages anyone who is struggling not to be afraid to ask for help.

“You definitely gonna be like okay, that is a weight lifted off my shoulders,” she said. “I got this, and it is really empowering to know that you’ve done something that no one can make you feel bad about. You’ve accepted something that no one can take from you.”