The week had barely begun, and already Cynthia
Lucero-Chavez, the McKinney-Vento liaison for Stafford County Public Schools,
was attempting to navigate the families she works with through a new crisis.
“We just understood today that one of our hotels on [U.S.]
17 is not allowing microwaves anymore,” Lucero-Chavez told the Advance on a
recent Tuesday. “So, the families living there are now without any capacity to
prepare any sort of nutritious meal for their children. How will they manage to
prepare food without the ability to cook? That’s today’s crisis.”
But in Lucero-Chavez’s world, there is a crisis every day.
The day before, Lucero-Chavez said, she’d used donated funds that she luckily
had on hand to help a family that became suddenly homeless and didn’t even have
a car to sleep in.
“The children were going to be coming off the bus to find
the family sitting on the curb with their gear,” Lucero-Chavez said.
Across the Fredericksburg region, McKinney-Vento
coordinators for local school divisions say families have more needs—and more
complex needs—than ever before.
Right now, there are children attending Spotsylvania County
Public Schools who are living out of their family car— “a new situation” this
year, said Michelle Swisher, the division’s McKinney-Vento liaison.
Last year was the first year that Jennifer Bunn noticed this
occurring in Fredericksburg City Schools.
In Stafford, Lucero-Chavez said she is finding that she has
to prioritize between a homeless family with a car and one that is literally
without shelter of any kind.
“Now what I see happening, that is alarming to me, is that
we have a family living in a shed,” she said. “We have families living in
closets or living in very inadequate commercial spaces.”
“This is probably the most dire I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve
been doing this for eight years,” Lucero-Chavez continued.
As of mid-November, there were 757 identified homeless
students in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford County schools—385 in
Spotsylvania, 214 in Stafford, and 158 in Fredericksburg.
The numbers fluctuate every day, but they are either in line
with or poised to surpass last year’s numbers.
“We ended last year with 630, and we’re right about where we
were at this point last year, maybe five or six more kids,” Swisher said.
In Fredericksburg, Bunn said, “We ended last year with 190,
for comparison.”
“So, we’re only 30 off from that” at not even halfway
through the school year, she said.
The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act
The work Lucero-Chavez, Bunn, and Swisher do as
McKinney-Vento liaisons is mandated by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance
Act—a federal law, included in the Every Student Succeeds Act, that ensures
that homeless children “receive equal access to the same free, appropriate
public education, including a public preschool education, as other children and
youths,” according to a
U.S. Department of Education fact sheet.
The law guarantees transportation to the students’ home
school in the case of sudden displacement and ensures that there are no
barriers to enrollment or to accessing academic and extracurricular activities.
The law requires state education departments to designate a
statewide coordinator of McKinney-Vento services, including the administration
of grant funding as authorized by the law. The statewide coordinator in
Virginia is Project Hope,
which is housed at the College of William and Mary.
The federal law also mandates that each local school
division identify a liaison for homeless students. The liaison—according to a
fact sheet published by SchoolHouse
Connection, a national organization that advocates for homeless children
and youth—is responsible for ensuring transportation; referring families to
health, dental, mental health, housing, substance abuse, and other appropriate
services; participating in statewide professional development; and providing
professional development on homeless students to school building staff.
Students are eligible for services under McKinney-Vento if
they “lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” according to
the law. This definition includes “those who are sharing the housing of others
due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; staying in
motels, trailer parks, or campgrounds due to the lack of an adequate
alternative; staying in shelters or transitional housing; or sleeping in cars,
parks, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, or similar settings.”
This definition is broader than the federal Department of
Housing and Urban Development’s definition of homelessness, which does not
include people who are “doubled up,” or sharing someone else’s house.
The HUD definition is used to determine eligibility for
services through local Continuums of Care, which can include housing
assistance. But families that are “doubled up” are not eligible for this
assistance.
Emergency shelter options
That leaves emergency shelters as the main option for
McKinney-Vento families, the liaisons said—but emergency shelter options for
Fredericksburg-area families with children are limited.
Loisann’s Hope
House is the region’s only family homeless shelter. The Brisben Center
is another emergency shelter but can only accommodate up to eight families.
“Even for the families who truly want and need to escape the
subsistence lifestyle of hotels, overcrowded homes, or hiding out of sight,
there is not enough capacity or funding so designated to serving them,” Brisben
Center executive director David Cooper told attendees at the annual Brisben
Breakfast on November 7.
Swisher, who has been at her job for 16 years, said she is
noticing that families stay eligible for McKinney-Vento services for longer
periods of time. She said more families are living in hotels now than
previously, because they have been homeless for so long that doubling up with
another family became unsustainable.
“If you were to think about it, that is attributable to the
cost of housing,” she said. “Having to have that first month and last month’s
rent—how do you come up with almost $4,000?”
Families that do stay doubled up are now bouncing frequently
from one house to another, Swisher said.
“There’s a lot more movement, you know, ‘I can stay here for
a couple of nights, and then I have to go here,’” she said.
In Stafford, the number of families who are doubled up and
the number living in hotels or motels is about equal, where previously there
were always more living doubled up than in hotels, Lucero-Chavez said.
Currently, 95 of the 214 identified students are doubled up.
Lucero-Chavez said she is seeing families with evictions on
their records from when the COVID-19 emergency rental assistance programs
ended. The eviction’s effect on their credit combined with the cost of living
makes it extremely difficult to obtain another lease, so they are bouncing
around from motels to friends’ houses and even to sheds and closets.
“There have been so many changes of address for our families
this year,” Lucero-Chavez said. “They are moving so much.”
Bunn delivered the keynote address at the Brisben Breakfast
and stressed “what a relief it is for families when they do get in shelter.”
“It’s really hard for families when they are living in the
motel or hotel situations to be able to save up any money,” she said. “It does
seem that the shelter placements tend to be the best bridge to permanent
housing.”
“For sure, more shelter space would be helpful,” Bunn
continued. “The shelters are amazing and doing what they can, but the need is
surpassing [what they can do.]”
