NORTH FORT MYERS

Together at all costs

AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS
AWILLIAMS@NEWS-PRESS.COM
Alyssa, 10, leads the family to the Salvation Army in Fort Myers after having dinner at Sally’s Cafe next door. Lannie, Cassy, Austin and Shanda follow.

The first night was the hardest.

Shanda tried to make the kids comfortable behind the trash cans, settling their heads on their school backpacks before kissing them goodnight. No pillows, no blankets — she'd tossed them earlier to lighten their loads.

Then she and Lannie stood watch over their central Fort Myers hiding place, praying they wouldn't be discovered by the police, the building owner or other, perhaps hostile, homeless people.

Homeless people.

It still felt powerfully strange for Shanda to think of herself and her family that way, but there they were, sleeping on the ground, their seven bags carefully arranged around them, nowhere else to go but under this awning she hoped would protect them if the rain came.

"That first night, there was a big altercation across the street," Shanda said: screaming, sirens, searchlights, a guy jumping the fence — just like a movie. Except it was their new reality.

Their new reality as homeless people — five more added to the tally of some 1,200 in Lee and Collier counties: Shanda, 33; Lannie, 26; Austin, 13; Alyssa, 10; and Cassy, 5. The News-Press has agreed not to use their last names out of respect for their privacy.

The real homeless population probably is at least triple that, advocates say. The counties' annual one-day surveys are simply a snapshot of people the census-takers manage to find, said Janet Bartos, who heads Lee County's nonprofit Homeless Coalition.

The Kansas City, Missouri, couple had hitched a ride with friends to Fort Myers the previous week with high hopes, a landscaping job for Lannie and the promise of a place to stay with their three children: her two — a 13-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, and his 5-year-old daughter. Though they're not married, they've been a family for more than five years; each is awaiting a divorce.

UPDATE:Helping hands extended to homeless family

"I've raised Cassy since she was a baby, and all the kids call him Daddy," Shanda said.

In fact, that intact family status is a key reason for their homelessness.

Single men, mothers with children, people battling addiction are all much more easily accommodated by Southwest Florida's social service system than two-parent families. That's partly because families are less common in the region's shelters, which tend to be single-sex or for women with young children.

"If you're a veteran, if you have mental illness, if you're an addict, there's a place for you," said Fred Schilffarth, who helps the homeless through CityGate Ministries in Fort Myers. "I hear of people saying they have alcohol issues just so they can have a place to stay," he said. "But a family like this, there's really very little for them. And that's what started digging into my brain — the fact that you have kids — one a little 5-year-old — out on the streets along with the 3,000 other homeless people walking the county every day."

And when Schilffarth says "walking," he's very much describing what this family does — nearly 100 miles a week. "We've got blisters on top of blisters. I'm just waiting for these to wear out," Shanda said, looking at her flip-flops.

Shanda takes a moment for herself after meeting the kids at the bus stop, supervising homework at a gas station table, gathering clothes from their storage unit, and picking up dinner at the Save-A-Lot grocery store before walking to their hiding place.

Just days after the promised work evaporated, the friends with whom they'd been staying in Cape Coral said the family had to get out — they didn't want the landlord asking questions.

"It was devastating. They told us right in front of the kids," Shanda said. Knowing they'd have to carry everything they owned, Shanda frantically began purging. Heavy things — shampoo, body wash — tossed. Bulky things like blankets — out. Unnecessary things — the girls' dolls, Shanda's prized pair of pink heels — gone.

"I took pride in them and the kids knew that so they were shocked. They were crying because I threw out my shoes. I got rid of all of our clothes but kept the kids'. My thought process was I didn't want them to go to school and have to wear the same thing over and over."

They set out. Each kid had a bag, including 40-pound Cassy hauling her pink, 10-pound backpack. They reached the Midpoint Memorial Bridge as evening fell.

Five-year-old Cassy wrings out her wet shirt after playing in a puddle at Centennial Park in downtown Fort Myers.

Never mind the sign forbidding them to cross it on foot. "We didn't have the money to get on the bus so we had no other option," Shanda said. "We waited 'til dark when the traffic had slowed down and then we crossed it."

It was the longest mile and a quarter she'd ever trudged. "Cassy was extremely sleepy, so we were fighting with her to keep her listening to us," she remembers. "It was horrible, thinking a car might come by not paying attention and hit them. The backpacks were heavy, so we had to keep stopping to readjust them but we didn't want to stop too long and get caught."

They made it across, kept walking.

"We stopped at a gas station to refill the kids' water bottles then we walked to the (Page Field) airport," Lanny said.

A woman who saw them struggling with the kids and bags stopped to give them a ride. They told her they were going to the Budget Inn a few blocks away.

"You don't want to tell people you've got no place to go," Shanda said.

With $2 left on a Kmart gift card, they bought the kids a bag of Doritos to share for dinner. Then they searched for a place to sleep until they found the row of trash cans.

The early days passed in a blur of logistics. Knowing United Way was a clearinghouse for such information, Shanda became a frequent caller (the couple have basic cellphones) as they waded through school registration, job applications and the search for a place to stay.

Their situation is all too familiar to Ann Arnall, Lee County Department of Human Services director, who can recite its details without knowing a thing about them: "Happens all the time. People hear there's a job here; they think someone's taking them in, so they pack everything up and arrive, only to learn something's happened and now they're stuck."

With fewer than 300 shelter beds in Lee and about 200 in Collier, social service providers struggle to help put people in permanent homes.

"You can't expect people to be housed with zero income," Arnall says. "There is just not a lot for people with no income, no roots, no background. It's a difficult situation that all agencies struggle with."

And government-subsidized housing is so scarce that Cheryl Labelle of the Lee County Housing Authority is taken aback when asked how long the wait for a space is. "The last time the list was open, it closed in a day," she said. "People stay (on the list) for years. Years."

What many people don't realize, says Rene Givens, program manager of Collier County's Hunger and Homeless Coalition, is how many families are teetering on the same brink from which this family fell. "(They're) just one car breakdown, one job loss, one medical emergency away from homelessness. The lawn care guy, your barista — it's not just the immigrants doing manual labor."

Once a family falls, getting back up is a stiff challenge — especially if it has a modest income.

For example, to afford the $1,038 monthly fair-market rent on a two-bedroom apartment (keeping within government guidelines that dictate renters pay no more than 30 percent on housing) someone would have to earn $19.96 an hour — $41,516 annually.

"Another way to look at this is that a household requiring a two-bedroom apartment would need to have 2.56 minimum-wage earners working full-time," Givens said.

Austin, 13, ties Cassy’s shoe in the lobby of the Salvation Army as they wait to get into the sanctuary where the family sleeps.

One day, as they sat in Lions Park on Cleveland Avenue near downtown Fort Myers, a couple approached them. Homeless as well, they told Shanda and Lannie they'd seen them wrangling the kids and wanted to help.

In short order, they gave the family the rundown: where to find hot meals, food pantries, job help, how to get a general delivery address at the downtown post office. They told them CityGate Ministries was a one-stop resource center with the added bonus of once-a-week showers.

"They've been angels watching over us," Shanda said, and have helped open her eyes to the nature of homelessness. "I always thought it was a drug dealer or an alcoholic or someone who just didn't care — that's who I thought was on the street," she said. "But it can be people like us."

The one thing their mentors couldn't help them with was shelter, other than showing them a more secluded spot than behind the cans. It became their base camp, as they settled into their new routine.

Shanda helps Cassy with her kindergarten homework at the RaceTrac gas station in Fort Myers.

School days begin at 4:30 a.m. with a 2-plus-mile trek to the kids' bus stop. Cassy and Alyssa go to San Carlos Park Elementary School; Austin goes to Dunbar Middle.

First stop is a McDonald's, where they duck into the bathrooms before the morning rush of customers arrives.

"We get them washed up and changed there," Shanda said. If their school uniforms have spots, she or Lannie scrub them out in the sink, then run them under the hand dryer.

"We want them to be clean and in fresh clothes. We don't want them to be embarrassed," Shanda said. "Because kids can be so cruel. On top of everything else, they don't need that stress. Sometimes you get looks, but nobody really says anything."

The girls' bus comes at 6 a few blocks from the RaceTrac at U.S. 41 and Edison Avenue. They head back to help Austin with homework until his comes at 9. The next six hours are spent mostly on foot, dropping off applications, standing in line at food pantries or hiking to the downtown Fort Myers library to use the public computers to research jobs and places to stay.

That's no easy task, Bartos says. "Not only do we lack resources to shelter families, we lack affordable housing also," she said. "There are waiting lists everywhere, which is a shame."

What Schilffarth finds ironic is that the region has plenty of empty spaces — seasonal condos, foreclosed homes, unrented apartments. The problem is, there's no mechanism or will to match the vacancies with people seeking shelter. "What would be great is for someone to sponsor this family, to say, 'Hey, I'm going to help my fellow human being' and give them a spare bedroom," he said.

With no such Samaritan in sight, the United Way referred them to shelters in Collier and Charlotte counties. Both had waiting lists. The Salvation Army family beds were full; they might be able to house Lannie with the single men and Shanda and her daughters with other females.

"They have to consider the safety issues and who can be sheltered together," says Arnall, "because a lot of the population is single adults so you can't have teens and little kids there. The situation for intact families is really difficult."

That's just what Shanda and Lannie learned.

"The issue was Austin's 13 and they don't usually take them at that age. So they were telling me I could possibly come with the girls, but I would have to leave my son in the street. And what mother is OK with leaving her child in the street?"

Plus, she'd be separated from Lannie. Her eyes fill with tears at the idea. "He's my other half. He's their dad. So if you don't have one of us, you don't have a complete family. And without that, what do you have?"

They decided to keep sleeping outside. Together.

Lannie looks on as Cassy gives Shanda a hug while her son, Austin, hands his mother her purse. The family was waiting for the rain to stop on the courthouse steps.

Once they've collected their kids from the bus in the afternoon, it's back to the RaceTrac for homework, then they walk to whichever church or nonprofit is serving dinner. Early on, they'd rented a storage cubby about the size of a school locker in which they keep extra clothes and cans of beans and soup for the times they can't get to a meal site. Once night begins to fall, they head for their hiding place.

"When it starts to get dark, that's when my whole stomach starts to get upset," Shanda said. "I'm so worried about something happening or the police showing up and taking my kids from me. That's my biggest fear — for them to come in and take them for something I couldn't prevent and have tried everything possible to (fix)."

She paused as a single tear streaked down one tanned cheek. "It's hard. I cry myself to sleep at nighttime, but I don't want my kids to see it because I don't want them to be worried."

Small luxuries mean a lot. After a morning spent donating plasma, Lannie walked away with a $50 prepaid Visa card. That afternoon was like a holiday.

"He took them to Wendy's to get something to eat and they were so appreciative — 'Thank you, Daddy. Thank you so much,' they kept saying. And the next morning we surprised them by telling them they could ride the (LeeTran) bus instead of having to walk. That was huge."

There was some good news last week, though: Shanda got word she'd been hired at McDonald's; she's now in training. More good news: A space opened up on the Salvation Army's sanctuary floor for a night. That night led to another, and another.

Alyssa, 10 and Cassy, 5, play at Centennial Park in Fort Myers after the rain stopped.

No, Shanda and Lannie aren't married, but the Army's social service director Bob Poff said sometimes it's important to be flexible. "Our major (Tom Louden) — the boss here — has a great heart," Poff said. "Our opportunities need to be as broad and as inclusive as we can make them. We still have to do our due diligence and make sure the people we bring in here wouldn't be harmful ... but our intent is to respect the family relationship as it's presented to us."

Camping on the carpet is not the nonprofit's typical housing setup, Poff said. "When we first brought them in (and) I met them, I was concerned because all we had was a mat on the floor and that's tough."

Austin and his sister, Alyssa, prepare their pillowcases and bed sheets inside the sanctuary area of the Salvation Army in Fort Myers.

But like Schilffarth, Poff couldn't stop thinking about the children. "That little 13-year-old boy," he said, shaking his head. "And I'm thinking, boy, he's making some kind of memories ... He's not going to forget whatever experience he has here, so my intent was for these children to be as cared for as we can make them, understanding that their family's in a tough spot, but it's not always going to be like this."

So the conference room carpet has replaced the concrete and the family no longer has to wash up in the park. Lannie's hot on the trail of a security job and Shanda has yet to receive her first McDonald's check, but when she does, it's headed for savings.

The short-term goal? Shanda doesn't hesitate: "By my second or third check, to be able to be in our own place. To tell my kids they have their own home again."

And long-term?

"To turn around from my experience and share our story to help others," she said. "And I want my kids to participate because I want them always to remember: There was a time when we were down and we didn't have anything, and there were other people to help us, so I want them to be there to help others as well.

"And I don't want them to think it's ever OK to give up."

Shanda and Lannie sit inside CityGate Ministries in Fort Myers where they’ve gotten help and referrals for various services.

They both grew up working-class kids around Kansas City.

Born in Kansas, Shanda's father owned a bait shack and her mom a daycare. She went to college and finished one credit shy of a degree in office management.

Missouri-born Lannie's disabled single mom died of heart disease when he was 13. After that, he stayed with a series of relatives until he graduated from high school and began working in security and landscaping as he pieced together classes to become a dental hygienist.

Five years ago, his ex presented him with a daughter before she went to jail and Lannie, 26, became a single father.

He met 33-year-old Shanda, a single mother of two, online; it's something they laugh about now, five years later. Each was attracted to the other's devotion to their kids and soon they were a happily blended family.

Shanda's parents, however, cut her off completely because Lannie is black.

He worked security and she was an administrative assistant until both lost their jobs a year ago. A cousin promised them a place to stay in the Panhandle in exchange for taking care of her nine kids, so they moved. Lannie got a landscaping job in Fort Myers and commuted home on the weekend; Shanda was a manager at Hardee's.

Eventually, Lannie's manager suggested they move to Fort Myers because there was plenty of work. They sold most of their possessions, put the rest into storage and moved, intending to stay with Lannie's co-worker in Cape Coral until they could find a place of their own.

A week after they arrived, Lannie was laid off. Two days after that, their co-worker kicked them out.

They were on the streets.