10
MORGAN HILL TIMES
APRIL 12, 2019
A van was home
GILROY FAMILY STRUGGLES TO COPE WITH HOMELESSLESS AND SON WITH DISABILITIES Barry Holtzclaw Managing Editor
Winter housing ends
In an interview this month, Faviola says she is frustrated by the paperwork required for the new housing
assistance, but hopeful things will work out. “It was only a winter program,” she says, shaking her blue-tinted hair. “It hurts to leave a place that you get used to, but the kids took it well, took it OK. “So we are in a ‘vacation’ mode, back in a motel,” she says, shaking her head. Then she sighs: “They keep asking me to go to meeting after meeting, and it’s like something is always missing and the paperwork—well it almost makes you want to give up,” and her voice trails off. Even with the continuing struggles with Alex’s health and physical challenges, the first several years of her growing family “were OK” because they had a place to live in Gilroy, Faviola recalls. “But then we lost the house that I was renting from a friend. My friend kicked me out,” says Faviola, a soft-spoken 37-yearold. “Destiny was just a baby. “Living out of storage, and the van, is not really good.” This winter’s usual four-month stay at the Ochoa Center, located near Gilroy’s wastewater treatment plant, was cut short, to two months, because farmworkers had stayed longer than usual in the fall. The county funding for 35 families didn’t meet the need. Vicky Martin, director of community engagement
Jacqueline Ramseyer
Alex Bataz is 9 years old, the oldest of three children; his brother Bruce just turned 8, and sister Destiny will be 4 this year. Alex has a dog named Rocky, a little brown Chihuahua who licks the boy’s face and bounces in circles in his lap. Alex loves all kinds of music and loves to sway to the music and watch his brother and sister dance. He can only watch them because cerebral palsy has taken away his ability to walk. He can’t sing or talk with them because autism interferes with his ability to speak. Alex spent the first few months of his life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. He has spent most of the last four years living in a Honda Odyssey minivan with Rocky, Bruce, Destiny and his mom and dad, Faviola and Carlos Bataz. The Bataz family is one of an estimated 100 homeless families in southern Santa Clara County, among the approximately 1,260 homeless individuals in South County in the most recent homeless
census taken in 2017. A new homeless census was taken in January and is expected to be released next month. Local agencies expect the numbers of people—and families— without homes in and around Gilroy, Morgan HIll and San Martin will increase. After months of misfortune, including a broken wheelchair, the Bataz family has new optimism. For two months, they lived at Santa Clara County’s temporary shelter for homeless families at the Arturo Ochoa Migrant Center on Southside Road in southeast Gilroy. The center shut its winter shelter operation March 25, forcing 35 families to leave to make way for the next seasonal tenants—migrant farm workers arriving for spring planting. Abode Services, a leading Bay Area provider of services to people without homes, stepped in and spared the Bataz family from a return to more long nights sleeping in the van in a Gilroy shopping center parking lot. The nonprofit agency was able to find the family temporary shelter in a local motel, and is working to find the family of five a more permanent shelter.
ARRIVING FOR DINNER Carlos Bataz and his daughter Destiny and
son Alex are greeted by Vicky Martin, of the St. Joseph’s Family Center.
for St. Joseph's Family Center, says a half dozen families were turned away in January. “Many of them are back living in their vehicles,” Martin adds.
No safe parking in Gilroy
Martin says that In Gilroy, a night’s sleep in a station wagon, SUV, minivan or RV in an abandoned parking lot is often interrupted. “They get rousted a lot by authorities, because there is no safe parking area in Gilroy like there is in Morgan Hill,” says Martin. “Faviola was so thrilled to be in Ochoa,” says Martin, who has been working to feed and house homeless
people in Gilroy for more than 18 years. “She said, ‘It’s not glamorous, but it’s a home for the kids.’ ” Faviola takes Bruce to school at El Robles Elementary each day, and sometimes drops Carlos off for temporary jobs. “I have talked to some teachers, who say it's very difficult to teach homeless children because there is no stability in housing and therefore they don’t have a good place to study,” says Martin. “It’s hard for the parents to be consistent with their homework when they are constantly worried about where they are going to sleep. “Once a family becomes homeless it is so difficult
to get out of homelessness. It’s a horrible cycle. “The vast majority of the homeless people we serve— 90 percent—are local,” says Martin. “They grew up here, they were born here, this is their community. That’s why they don't want to leave; it’s the only thing they know. Even if they get the opportunity to go to San Jose, they don’t want to. “This is home, this is where their children live; here is where their parents grew up.” After a plate of pasta and some cheesecake at one of the three-timesweekly Lord’s Table ➝ Homeless, 11
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