Homelessness on the rise in Twin Cities schools: Shayla’s story

Like many of Edison High School’s homeless and highly mobile students, senior Shayla Perry’s* story is full of twists and turns, long bus rides, new neighborhoods and schools full of strangers.

This is the first of two stories on homeless students in the Twin Cities. For more, see School and teacher: Anchors for homeless students in Minneapolis, St. Paul.

* Name has been changed to protect student’s privacy

It started Shayla’s freshman year. After a fire destroyed her family’s Chicago home (and all of Shayla’s stuff, including her eighth grade graduation dress), Shayla moved to Apple Valley and started at Rosemount High. At first, the family stayed with her brother, but it’s hard to live in someone else’s home and it’s hard having someone else live in yours, so the family moved to a shelter in Eagan, and a bus drove Shayla back and forth to Rosemount. Then there was the place in North Minneapolis, with a different brother’s girlfriend, and a cab that always dropped Shayla off late to school. Before freshman year was up, her family was in St. Paul, and Shayla started at Como High School.

Now Shayla is a senior at Edison High, and her family lives down the street from school. Shayla has plans. “I want to be a nurse that sees stuff — does stuff,” she said. Although much has happened since that first year in Minnesota — a junior year in Brooklyn Center, then North Minneapolis where a tornado knocked her house crooked and as a bonus destroyed the belongings she and her family had scattered throughout homes in the neighborhood — Shayla sees freshman year as the source of today’s stress

“A lot of stuff, it’s boiling down on me right now,” she said. The schoolwork she missed freshman year makes it tough for her to complete this year’s work.  Homeless and highly mobile students tend to do worse on state tests than other low-income students.

Since September, Shayla has walked Edison’s halls alongside at least 79 other homeless or highly mobile students. Every year at every school there are kids like her, but this year there are more. The Minnesota Housing Partnership’s most recent quarterly report, released in December, showed an eight percent increase between 2010 and 2011 in the number of homeless children in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth combined. MHP research and outreach manager Leigh Rosenberg explained that a triple whammy of long-term unemployment, low vacancy rates and slowed housing construction is leaving many families with no option but to check into shelters or double-up with friends or family.

Federal McKinney-Vento legislation requires districts to remove barriers to enrollment, attendance and success for homeless students by providing resources such as transportation and school supplies. As more kids require services and district budgets shrink, the challenges of delivering basic needs and wrestling down the income achievement gap are more daunting than ever.

Becky Hicks knows it. She’s the homeless liaison in St. Paul, where 823 homeless students were identified between July and September this year, compared to 618 last year – a whopping 33 percent jump. “Since this past July 1 is when we’ve seen numbers like we’ve never seen before,” Hicks said. Usually St. Paul is able to rely on a large donation of school supplies from nonprofit Feed the Children, but this year supplies are already almost gone. For the first time, Hicks will have to apply for a grant to purchase more.

Likewise, for the first time, St. Paul had to contract outside vendors to provide transportation for homeless students. Between July and December of 2011, the district transported 210 students living outside the district or their schools’ busing zones, compared to 79 in 2010. “We just don’t have enough drivers and vehicles to cover the demand,” she said. Making matters worse, budget constraints forced Hicks to reduce her staff this year.

McKinney-Vento provides some direct funding via competitive grants distributed by states to districts, but districts must match grant funds. In St. Paul, far more money comes from Title I, federal funds used to serve low-income students. This year St. Paul is using $100,000 in grant money, compared to more than $850,000 in Title I funds. McKinney-Vento grants cannot be used for transportation, but in Minnesota, the state reimburses those costs.

According to Rosenberg, it all goes back to the foreclosure crisis. Foreclosure notices may be down, but those who left homes months or years ago are now renting — renting so much that there aren’t many apartments left. Between July and September, only 2.3 percent of Twin Cities apartments were vacant, down from 7.3 percent in 2009. Rosenberg said 5 percent would be a healthy number, and the current rates are the lowest they’ve been in 10 years.

Meanwhile, construction of residential housing has slowed. Rosenberg said it’s difficult for companies to find financing for housing projects, and if they do, it’s often at rates that make it unfeasible to charge affordable rents. Right now the average rent for a Twin Cities apartment is $925. To be considered affordable, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says housing shouldn’t cost more than 30 percent of a family’s income. According to the 2010 American Community Survey, the average rental household earned $31,371. That means affordable housing would cost $784. The survey found that one in four Twin Cities families uses more than half their income for housing.

Families who have been low on luck for a while are running out of resources. As of September, nearly one in three jobless Americans had been out of work more than a year. Until 2009, that ratio hadn’t exceeded 15 percent in more than 40 years.

“It used to be, I would meet a family who would be crying upon coming to shelter, saying, ‘I never thought I'd be in this position,’” said Margo Hurrle, Minneapolis Public Schools’ shelter coordinator. “I’d be able to smile and say, ‘Know what? Give it 30 days, you’re gonna be in your own place, and this will all be a distant memory.’”

“I don’t think I’ve said that in four years.”

Alleen Brown

Alleen Brown (alleenbrown@tcdailyplanet.net or Twitter @AlleenBrown) is a freelance writer from Minneapolis.