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A NEW FOUNDATION At 14, Paul found himself bouncing around to different foster homes after his mom died. At 17, he began a decade of homelessness, working odd jobs and sleeping wherever he could. He knew he had to make a change when he suddenly became the sole custodian of his 12- and 8-year-old sons. He and his sons doubled up in a one-bedroom apartment with a relative who gave him three months to find work and move out. Paul enrolled in a workforce program at Goodwill of North Georgia, one of S2S’s nonprofit partners in Atlanta. S2S was able to help him gain employment with one of our partners. He began working as a Maintenance Tech and moved with his sons into a two-bedroom apartment on the property. CORT delivered new furniture, and his sons now have their own room with bunk beds. Also, the apartment is on a school bus stop, so the kids can catch the bus to school from where they live. “For a long time as long as I had a place to sleep, I was OK. For a long time, I worked part-time and temp jobs, and as long as I had enough money to eat, I was OK.
ALL THAT CHANGED WHEN I GOT CUSTODY OF MY BOYS. It’s not enough to raise them the way I was raised. I want them to have a safe place to live and grow up and go to school. And I don’t want them to have to worry about where they’re going to be staying next week, or whether they’ll have to sleep on the floor in someone else’s apartment. And I want them to have a father because it’s something that I never had. Without this apartment and job, I don’t know if I could have kept my sons with me.”
— Paul, Maintenance Tech, IRT Living, Atlanta
