Five-year-old Dora and her mother Samantha had been living in their car for the whole summer. They had been evicted from their apartment in the spring, after the third month of not being able to pay the rent. But the weather was getting cold, so they stayed in homeless shelters in order to get a warm meal and a cot to sleep on. Samantha never got a good night’s rest anymore, but she knew that Dora slept more soundly inside.

Samantha and Dora had enjoyed better days. Sam had a good job with a decent wage as a female construction worker. But a year earlier, she suffered a severe neck injury and long hospitalizationin a car accident. The bills piled up and began to squeeze daily essentials out of the budget. She tried three different jobs, but the resulting cluster headaches from her accident prevented her from performing to expectations, and she was fired from each.

Samantha’s daily pain — and the enormity of her situation — overtook her ability to cope, and she became depressed. Finally, she had only enough money for food and utilities, so she stopped paying her bills, and then her rent.

Then Sam and Dora were evicted from their apartment. They left nearly everything they owned — there was nowhere to keep it. As they drove away, Dora cried as she watched her belongings being thrown into the trash. There was no family close enough to help, and Sam was too embarrassed to ask friends to take them in. So they stayed in the car that night. And the next night . . . and the next.

But one morning at a local shelter Samantha talked to Steve, our outreach worker. Steve thought Samantha and Dora would be good prospects for our Transitions Apartment program — a two-year transitional housing program that helps highly-motivated persons regain financial stability through housing and wrap-around services including case management, financial assistance, mental health counseling and assistance in obtaining job training.

Today, three years later, Sam and Dora are in their own apartment again. Sam earned a certificate in computers, and now works part of the week at the office, and part-time at home — an arrangement that accommodates her lingering pain. She continues with therapy once a month to help manage her depression. Sam and Dora regularly spend time with good friends they met in our Positive Parenting Group. They don’t have a lot of money, but the bills are paid and Sam is slowly building a savings account.

And their car is used only for transportation now.