To escape homelessness, Everett mother navigates a labyrinth

EVERETT — One September morning, Stephanie Boyle dropped her two youngest boys at day care at 9 a.m.

Then she headed back to the Housing Hope emergency shelter in Everett, where she and her kids had spent the past 5½ months.

On the way, she phoned her case manager with the Kenaitze Indian Tribe in Alaska.

At 10 a.m., it was another phone call with a case manager from the University of Washington’s Parent-Child Assistance Program.

At 11 a.m., she took her son, 3, to his new school for an hour-long orientation. Afterward, she and a friend piled stuff into the car for the family’s upcoming move.

At 1:30 p.m., she met her PCAP case manager in person.

Then she left to drop off a rent check — for her first home in years.

For Boyle, navigating the labyrinth of housing and family resources in Snohomish County has taken the energy of a full-time job. And it has taken time that many families don’t have to spare.

Boyle was homeless off-and-on for about five years. Finally, she and her kids have moved into permanent housing in Marysville with the help of a network of social services.

Their outcome is the best-case scenario.

For hundreds of others with housing in limbo in Snohomish County, the wait can feel endless. Emergency shelters plug the gap for people with nowhere else to turn. But those are meant to be short stays, up to 90 days, with few exceptions.

An annual tally of the county’s homeless population found 105 homeless families with children, a 14% increase over the previous year. And it’s almost certainly an undercount.

A decade ago, Everett Public Schools identified 843 homeless students. By last year, the count had jumped to 1,497.

Some of Boyle’s kids, too young to attend school, would go uncounted by that statistic.

At 4:30 p.m., she needed to pick up her boys. So she unpacked in Marysville and headed back to the Everett day care.

At 5:15 p.m., she drove to her case manager at the shelter.

At 6:30 p.m., she brought her kids back to the apartment in Marysville to spend their first night in the new home together.

‘You’re just frozen’

Boyle is open about her past.

She’ll tell you about growing up in Everett with her dad.

He was “an amazing provider,” she’ll say. “We didn’t have to want for anything.”

At Cascade High School, Boyle played softball and volleyball. She was on the honor roll. After graduation, she briefly studied criminal justice at Everett Community College, intending to pursue law.

She also experimented with drugs — cocaine and marijuana. Later, opiates. Addiction set in, driving her to theft to support her habit.

At 23, she went to prison for the first time.

“I always felt like I had no reason to become a drug addict,” she said. In her eyes, she had no “massively traumatic experience” to justify it.

Over time, she came to understand drugs were her way of coping with what she calls her “little traumas,” like her mom moving out when she was young.

Boyle served three stints in prison. In the most serious incident, she was caught shoplifting a T-shirt at Macy’s with her boyfriend. In the ensuing scuffle, her boyfriend pulled out a gun, which she says she didn’t know he had on him. The gun fired. Police thought there was an active shooter in the mall.

Boyle was pregnant at the time.

She was convicted of third-degree assault, a felony.

She got out in 2016, but wasn’t able to get custody of her oldest son, which played a large part in a relapse. Her housing situation got worse. She and a partner stayed where they could, sometimes with family, sometimes in cars and tents. They camped along the Interurban Trail, then around Silver Lake.

“It’s funny, because when you’re out there, there’s way more people in random places than you think there are,” she said with a laugh. “It becomes its own little community too, because everybody’s trying to help each other. I mean, either hurt each other or help each other, I suppose.”

Pregnant with her second son, she stayed with her mom. She stayed sober, but relapsed shortly after giving birth. During the third pregnancy, she couldn’t stop using.

“The whole time, I was so scared,” she said. “You’re just frozen thinking you’re just gonna be so screwed if you go to the doctor and are like, ‘I need help quitting drugs and I’m pregnant.’”

Her third son was born with drugs in his system. That triggered a Child Protective Services case.

To get custody, she needed to go to treatment.

‘How they get counted’

In Snohomish County’s latest tally of homelessness, known as the point-in-time count, households without children rose by 7%.

The number of homeless families with children rose by 14%.

Why the discrepancy?

It’s possible families are getting hit harder by rising rents. Single people are more likely to have roommates, pointed out Suzanne Peterson, director of the Everett Gospel Mission’s family shelter. Meanwhile, a family with kids needs to track down a multi-bedroom home on a tight budget.

Washington’s pandemic-era eviction moratorium ended in 2021, so families facing eviction may owe thousands of dollars in unpaid rent.

It’s also possible the point-in-time count is simply skewed by how it’s conducted. Single people might just be harder to find, suggested Galina Volchkova, executive director of housing services at Volunteers of America Western Washington.

Homeless families “might be coming to the library, to the cold weather shelter, to family shelter and that’s how they get counted,” she said.

More homelessness data comes from the county’s Coordinated Entry. To get federal funding, the county must have a system to decide who gets priority for limited housing resources.

Many get enrolled by calling 211, the social services hotline. If they are eligible for housing, they are assigned a “resource navigator” who assesses vulnerability — health problems, substance use history and how long they’ve been homeless.

Higher vulnerability means higher priority.

It’s never going to be perfect, but it’s about “coming up with the most fair process that we can,” said Jackie Anderson, manager of the county’s housing and community services division.

As of September, 305 families enrolled in the system lacked permanent housing, according to county data. Another 118 families were at imminent risk of losing their homes.

But the number of emergency shelter units set aside for families in the county? Just 82, with 201 beds.

Another way of putting it: 82 spaces for over 400 at-risk families.

‘A safe place’

About a year ago, Boyle checked into the Evergreen Manor Family Services Center, pregnant with her fourth son. Her two younger boys joined her later.

It marked a turning point.

Going through treatment with her kids made a big difference.

“We could really learn how to be together again in a safe place,” she said. “I wasn’t really worried about relapsing, because I was in a safe environment.”

Last winter, weeks before she was discharged, Boyle called 211, figuring they would be able to help her. But the operator told her she didn’t qualify for Coordinated Entry, she said.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development divides people eligible for housing into categories: “Fleeing / Attempting to Flee Domestic Violence,” “Imminent Risk of Homelessness,” “Homeless Under Other Federal Statutes” and “Literally Homeless.”

A person leaving an “institution” is only “literally homeless” if they lived there 90 days or less, according to HUD. “Literally homeless” means living somewhere “not meant for human habitation” or a shelter. Someone in an institution less than three months could qualify, if they met the criteria before entering.

The county is required to go by that definition to get federal funding.

So after almost six months in treatment, with nowhere to go afterward, Boyle was no longer considered homeless.

And she didn’t qualify for Coordinated Entry’s homelessness prevention program meant for those at imminent risk.

Everyone who meets HUD’s definition gets enrolled in Coordinated Entry. But as for the prevention program, staffing levels can’t keep up with the high volume of requests, Anderson said.

Coordinated Entry’s prevention program is mostly for people facing eviction, to keep them in housing they already have, she explained. Someone exiting an institution is unlikely to be enrolled in the program. Facilities should do discharge planning, Anderson said, to help people transition out.

‘You just lost your place in line’

Fitting the HUD definition of homelessness is the key to finding housing through Coordinated Entry, though by no means a guarantee.

People can get disqualified for counterintuitive reasons.

Accepting a hotel room paid for by a friend, for example, moves people into the “housed” category for that night.

“Even though it might be a temporary hotel stay, you just lost your place in line,” said Joan Penney, spokesperson for Housing Hope, explaining federal rules families might not know.

People living in a hotel could still meet the HUD definition of “chronically homeless” and remain eligible for housing. Or they could be disenrolled from Coordinated Entry until they meet the definition again.

Schools operate under a less strict definition of homelessness. They’re governed by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law guaranteeing equal access to education and support for homeless youth.

McKinney-Vento classifies students as homeless as long as they “lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” a definition that encompasses a much broader range of situations.

In Everett Public Schools, students who meet that definition, as well as those in foster care, are referred to Kids in Transition. The district program supports kids and connects families to resources.

More than 70% of students in the Everett program this school year were “doubled up” at the time they entered, meaning their family was staying with others “due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.”

That statistic is in line with national data.

“A lot of times people go, ‘Oh, that doesn’t really seem very homeless to me,’” said Amy Perusse, coordinator of the Kids in Transition program. “But the reality is that those students are experiencing the same difficulties, if not more.”

Those kids might be “walking on eggshells,” she said, wondering, “Is tonight gonna be the night we lose this place?”

‘We’re having to start over’

The Kids in Transition program in Everett schools is centered on school access, like transportation, school supplies and food. Staff can help connect families to services. Often, they recommend families call 211.

“We’re not going to pry into everybody’s business to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes,” Perusse said. “We want to make sure that you’re at school and you’re safe during the time when you’re at school.”

If a student confides in a staff member about their living situation, she added, “we’re going to help you with the rest of it if we can.”

A decade ago, Everett Public Schools counted 843 students eligible for McKinney-Vento protections.

By 2019, the figure had risen to 1,144.

It dropped in 2020, as homeless students got harder to identify during the pandemic. Because kids didn’t have to commute to class, schools weren’t flagging families who were having trouble getting kids to school. And fewer families confided in staff about their living situation, Perusse said.

Post-lockdown, the number of homeless students went up — and kept climbing. Already this school year, 1,359 qualifying students have been identified. That’s more than the district has ever seen at this point in the year.

The program is stretched thin as staff cope with the rapid increase and the school district deals with budget cuts and staff turnover. It’s not just the volume of kids, but the seriousness of their situations, “beyond anything we had ever seen,” Perusse said.

Before, she said, families reported they couldn’t pay a $1,200 deposit. Post-pandemic, some families owed $20,000 in back rent.

There has been an increase in unaccompanied homeless youth, Perusse said, as well as single parents getting sick or dying.

Graduation rates for homeless students had climbed steadily for years, reaching 100% in 2018-19. They slid down to 86.7% in the 2020-21 school year. Meanwhile, other students had graduation rates reliably above 95%.

“I kind of feel like we’re having to start over,” Perusse said. “I feel like the whole world had a reset.”

‘Who do you see on the street?’

When Penney speaks to crowds about homelessness, she always asks: “Who do you see on the street more when you’re out and about?”

“Men,” people tell her.

“Single, unaccompanied men are in the lowest priority,” Penney said. “So that’s why you see them most often.”

Pregnant women or young children get the higher priority in Coordinated Entry.

The harsh reality is that losing custody of kids can put access to resources in jeopardy. Siobhan Ecker, who manages Housing Hope emergency shelters, sees that reality up close. She does weekly home visits with the six families at two shelters. The end goal is to get them into permanent housing.

In early September, she sat across from a shelter resident at a small table in one of the units. A cluster of pictures hung on the white wall behind them, including a collage of photos of a little girl.

“I feel like there’s something that you want to tell me,” Ecker said encouragingly.

The resident, a woman in her 30s, launched into her story. (She asked to remain anonymous to avoid damaging her ongoing child custody case.)

Her lawyer was pushing her to go into a six-month drug treatment program, she said.

She agreed to leave yesterday, but when the day came, “I just — I couldn’t do it.”

It was all too much, too fast. She worried her daughter wouldn’t be able to come with her, that they’d be separated for months.

“Nobody ever gives me time to think about things,” she said. “Not even a day.”

At the September home visit, Ecker listened, offered comfort and talked with the woman about her options.

She was set to move into an apartment, but if she lost custody of her child she could lose that too.

“Just because I’m not gonna have a kid, what, I don’t get housing now?” she asked.

“It’s a lot harder,” Ecker acknowledged. “It’s a lot harder for a single person to get housing in our county.”

Families with men also have fewer options. Many family emergency shelters in the county only take women and children. That can lead to family separation. Some families refuse help for fear they won’t be able to stay together.

“People that don’t know sometimes will say, ‘Well, look, see they don’t want shelter, they refuse shelter,’” Penney said. “It is not a black-and-white issue, they either want it or they don’t. There’s rules and there’s barriers and things that families have to navigate. And it can be very overwhelming.”

‘No one wants this’

In springtime, Boyle entered a Housing Hope shelter in Everett. She had just finished treatment and given birth to her fourth son.

She’d been reluctant to stay in a shelter in the past, wary of the stigma of accepting that kind of help. But after sleeping on the street, she was willing to go anywhere.

In the end, it was “the biggest blessing,” she said.

Boyle made friends with her neighbors at the shelter. When she got sick, she knocked on another unit’s door and asked if her neighbor could take care of one of her sons. The neighbor did.

And staying in the shelter finally made her eligible for Coordinated Entry. Boyle called 211 the day after she moved in. This time, she was referred for a YWCA housing voucher within a month, she said. It fully covers her rent.

Still, it took months to get moved into permanent housing.

Her Marysville home, she said, is a “new chapter.”

She hopes to work for Homeward House, a coalition of agencies led by YWCA Seattle | King | Snohomish. The coalition supports parents who are dealing with substance use disorder while below the federal poverty line. Boyle received that support herself. The group employs parents, like Boyle, who have been through similar struggles.

The Child Protective Services case against Boyle has finally been dismissed, she said. She’s spending time with her oldest son for the first time in years.

Boyle is proud of how far she’s come. But she understands she has hurt people she loves. Years of addiction kept her from her kids. Some fractured relationships may never fully heal. Being open about all of it will be worth it, she said, if she can help someone in a similar position to hers.

As for the ways she hurt herself, she wants people to see “no one wants this.”

“I’m still figuring out what it was that really pulled me away from my seemingly good life,” she said. “And maybe I’ll never fully figure it out. But it’s not because I’m a bad person.”

Sophia Gates: 425-339-3035; sophia.gates@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @SophiaSGates.

Resources are available:

Call 211 to get connected to help

Everett Gospel Mission Family Shelter (also called the Women and Children’s Shelter) – (425) 740-2501

Housing Hope – apply for the housing waitlist

Interfaith Family Shelter – 425-200-5121

Babies of Homelessness – provides diapers, wipes and formula

Homeward House – provides support for parents dealing with substance use disorder while below the federal poverty line.

Everett Public Library’s list of resources