RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Tiara Talo, 2, rested with her mother, Suzanne Leha, as Leha talked with Tiara's father, Vito Talo, outside the Women and Families Shelter in Honolulu yesterday.
A homeless family hopes
a new year will bring relief
from their troubles
Suzanne Leha always prepared her lies in advance. Sitting on a park bench with her youngest already asleep on her lap, she'd recite what to say in hopes of keeping her children safe and with her for one more night.
"My family threw me out" or "I missed the last bus" or "My boyfriend and I had a fight," she'd whisper aloud to the air. And later, at midnight or 1 a.m., when a police officer shot a flashlight in her eyes to wake her, she'd fire off her lies -- and be believed.
Officers rousting the homeless from city parks would do little more than tell the 23-year-old to "move on" and then move on themselves to Leha's park bench neighbors.
From Ala Moana to Aala, police would look at her two kids, ages 8 and 2, and be assured that the little ones had a home to go home to, she said.
Because families don't sleep in the park or at bus stops.
"It's not easy to get out there, and we're trying to work out of it," Leha says on a recent afternoon at the Institute for Human Services Women and Families' Shelter, where she, her youngest child, Tiara Talo, and her boyfriend, Vito Talo, have been for three months.
It's been two years since Leha -- who grew up in an abusive household taking care of a cocaine-addicted mother, had her first child at 14 and got hooked on crystal methamphetamine at 20 -- was evicted along with her two children from a low-income project in Palolo for being almost a half-year behind in paying her $200 monthly rent.
After leaving their home, the three moved into a small Kalihi apartment with Leha's boyfriend and his sister. When Talo had a fight with his sister about heavy drug use and partying in the housing area, Talo, Leha and their children moved to the park.
"I got to say, that was hard," Talo says. "I wanted all of us together, and I had to be strong for my family."
Somehow the family managed to dodge authorities and stay together on the streets. But the kids were taken away two months ago at the shelter, a week after Leha slapped her third-grader for wanting to wear mismatched clothes out.
"You don't have to go to school looking like a homeless, just because you are homeless," Leha told her 8-year-old, Tatiana, angrily. "It gives people reason to talk."
When the shelter's staff reported the incident to Child Protective Services, the agency learned of Leha's past crystal meth addiction, put the children in foster homes and required that Leha go into a drug treatment program.
On Nov. 30, Leha marked her 80th day of sobriety.
Tatiana, still in foster care, could be spending Christmas away from her family, despite Leha's attempts to get her back before the holidays.
While both kids were away, Leha and her boyfriend were forced to leave the families' shelter and separate -- one to the women's shelter in Kalihi, the other to a men's shelter on Sumner Street. After being apart for a day, the two chose to stay on the streets with each other.
At least they were together, Leha says.
RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
The Talo family -- Suzanne Leha, Vito Talo and 2-year-old daughter Tiara -- spent time yesterday in the communal family room of the Women and Families Shelter in Honolulu.
The couple have helped each other through dozens of trying times over their five-year relationship. Both say they couldn't have made it if not for the other.
"We've been to the bottomless pit," Talo says. "We've dealt with it with each other. We've got no choice."
Until moving into the IHS shelter just off Dillingham Boulevard, which is helping 23 families and has a waiting list of more than 50, Leha had been bouncing with her children and boyfriend from parks to the homes of relatives, who were less than agreeable to having four extra bodies to feed and shelter.
Over the course of two years, the family stayed for two- to three-month spurts with Talo's sister in Kalihi, a friend in Waipahu and Talo's cousin in Waianae.
In between the extended visits would be three to four months of life in the park with an infant, a small child and not enough money to buy diapers or a decent meal.
"We once had a place, too," Leha says, counting off all the things she never really appreciated -- her own telephone and television, her own bathroom, her own door. "I used to take everything for granted. Warm bed to sleep in and took it for granted."
When she and her family were on the streets, it was a daily chore to decide where to sleep, a choice largely dependent on whether Talo was scheduled for duty as a night shift doorman.
Sometimes, Leha would pick a covered city bus stop near Talo's workplace. Other times, she'd choose a building's eave. Once, a bench at Aala Park in direct fire of lawn sprinklers that she estimated came on a few minutes every hour beginning at midnight.
A few paydays a year, the couple would splurge for a cheap Waikiki hotel room.
Since moving into the shelter, Talo has been looking for better work and digging through welfare applications. The family was sanctioned for three months after the necessary paperwork -- which was sent to the shelter and backlogged in its mailroom -- was too late to verify their income status and secure a stream of checks.
Now the family is only eligible for food stamps.
"I really, really want a full-time job so much," Talo says. "It's just driving me crazy."
Leha is also applying for jobs, while working with Child Protective Services to get her firstborn back and with the shelter's social workers to move her family into transitional housing as early as January.
"I don't have much experience. I don't qualify," she says, naming the only three jobs she's ever held: a receptionist at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, a maid at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and a relief security guard.
As Christmas nears, Leha and Talo hope that their children will be happy with donated gifts.
This will be the first year the couple hasn't planned to spend the holiday with family members, who would always make sure that the little ones had presents under the tree.
"It's hard when you can't get your kids what they want," she says as she picks up Tiara gingerly, puts her on the bed and then begins to ready herself for a drug treatment meeting. Talo says it's even harder to visit Tatiana and hear her ask him, "Why can my sister go with you guys and not me?"
BACK TO TOP |
Isle homeless advocate
gains new perspective
with firsthand experience
as landlord
For decades, Carol Ignacio has been an advocate for the homeless.
Citing the lack of affordable housing as the No. 1 cause of homelessness, Ignacio decided to set an example: She went into the real estate business. Ignacio and her husband became landlords, with the goal of increasing -- ever so slightly with two apartments -- the affordable housing stock on the Big Island.
But now she realizes how tough it is to get homeless into housing because 60 percent to 70 percent of them are substance abusers.
But now, "I would never rent to anyone I suspected of having a drug problem -- and I'm coming from an advocate/social worker perspective," Ignacio said, noting she feels badly about the change in attitude.
Ignacio, executive director for the Office of Social Ministry in Hilo, overseen by the Catholic Archdiocese of Honolulu, said many substance abusers don't make good tenants.
"The parents get high and just stay awake all night," she says. "Of course, then so do the kids. They're just so neglected."
"And," she adds, "who wants neighbors like that?"
In 1989 she single-handedly started the Hawaii Island Food Bank.
Her Office of Social Ministry also operates two mobile dental vans on the Big Island and another on Maui, and conducts a number of outreach programs for the homeless.
The solution to getting the homeless into affordable housing?
"A responsive support system that is immediately available," Ignacio said, noting that a social service agency has to be available to help landlords cool down a tenant that is causing problems and get him treatment.
"In order to convince a landlord to take a tenant like that, we also need to be able to send someone over right away if that person starts acting up," she said.
