Jenn is a warm, personable individual who deeply loves her children. She describes herself as determined, resilient, passionate, and kind, qualities that become evident when you hear her story.
Jenn grew up in New York and moved to Vermont at a young age to teach ski school. There, she met her now ex-husband, father of her kids.
“We did everything one does in Vermont – raised kids that run around barefoot, know how to pick apples, and where carrots come from. We had a very hippie-ish lifestyle.” In the winter of 2020, Jenn was navigating the pandemic when her house had a flood, leaving her and her kids without hot water and heat. They lost everything in that flood. At the time, Jenn was going through a divorce and struggled to get someone to fix the pipes due to the pandemic. This led her and her kids to move to a hotel temporarily. With the flood and freezing conditions in her home, they stayed in the hotel until every savings account was exhausted. “There was no quick fix. We exhausted our savings and could no longer self-pay for the hotel.”
She reflected: “Things change so often and there was so much paperwork; it was really a challenge to figure everything out. Being homeless was truly a full time job. At times, I could be on the phone for over five hours trying to get a hotel room for me and my kids, and some nights, we couldn’t get one.”
Eventually, Jenn was referred to Pathways, which ultimately led to housing. “I’ll never forget the day that Ian called. He said, ‘Jenn, we have an apartment,’ and I said, ‘oh wow, that’s great,’ and hung up the phone. It wasn’t until I told my daughter that it fully registered what he said. I had to call him back to confirm that was actually what he said! I don’t know if I had a guardian angel or what, but with everyone I have worked with – Amos, Drew, Lena, Ian – no one ever told me what they were in charge of; they were just here for me. I look at them like my safety net. I know everyone related to my story in some way. There is such a kindness and desire for you to succeed.”
Jenn and her family moved into their new apartment in April after three years of experiencing homelessness. “I am really looking forward to stability and finally being able to exhale. Everything seems more doable now having a stable roof over our heads. I will never forget this chapter of my book, but I never want to get close enough to re-reading it. I am looking forward to closing this book and starting a new one.”
Jenn had a few final reflections from her experience:
“It was never on my radar, that is the one thing about homelessness – I don’t think it is ever on anyone’s radar. My kids had always gone to the same schools with the same community, and for them to lose everything they had and switch to five different towns and four different schools in a span of seven months was humbling. Now, being in stable housing, I realize the smallest luxuries that I took for granted – like baking cookies, making lasagna, buying a vacuum, having walls to separate my family in the house. There is all this loss being homeless. You get to know people begrudgingly because everyone is on a different journey, especially in a shelter, but you never know where people are or what they are doing. You want to find community, and people to have in your corner, but when you find them, they could die, go live on the streets again, or fall back into addiction. I think about these people and just wonder where they are and want to get a sense that they are okay. My family is much more healthy now in the way that we feel and the way that we treat each other. I couldn’t have done all of this without the people I worked with at Pathways.”
