Janelle R

Janelle is twenty-five and the mother of two boys. She and her children live in her mother’s ex-boyfriend’s house with six other adults in four bedrooms. Janelle lives in one room with her two children and shares a bed with her sister because there isn’t enough room for them all. Janelle had to move in with her mother when the apartment building she’d been living in was shut down by Licensing and Inspections because it was deemed uninhabitable. Until recently, Janelle would contribute some of her Food Stamps to the house as rent payments, but now her mother allows her to keep her food for herself and her kids because she saw that Janelle was struggling.

 

Janelle’s housing situation is her most pressing concern. On top of being crowded in a room with her sister and children, the shower in the house is non-functional, so she and her kids bathe in the sink. The ceiling of her bedroom caved in last year from snow pile-up and the repair job is incomplete, so Janelle is nervous about the coming winter. She has gotten things stolen from her by other people in the house, and so she hides food in her room and takes her purse with her everywhere, even to the bathroom. She is on a waiting list for a homeless shelter outside of Philadelphia, and calls every week to check on her status. Janelle has been looking for work for the past several months but hasn’t gotten any offers—she thinks this is because she hasn’t had the money for bus fare and so can’t apply for jobs in person.