It’s likely safe to say that, if asked to describe someone experiencing homelessness, the first image that comes to mind is of an adult, maybe someone standing at an intersection holding a sign asking for spare change or expressing a desire to work for cash or food.
It’s rare that we think, first or at all, of a child without a roof over their heads or at risk of not having a safe place to stay.
Ginny Monk is the children’s issues and housing reporter and a Report for America corps member writing for the CT Mirror. She’s also a winner of the 2023 Insight Award for Explanatory Journalism for “Notice to Quit,” a series reporting on children and families experiencing homelessness.
Working as the member of the investigative team at a newspaper in Arkansas in 2021, Monk got her start covering issues of homelessness and juvenile justice.
“I’ve always been writing about kids and housing,” she says. “I think those two things work really well and closely together. Where you live is such a personal thing. For kids, it has a huge effect on how life goes.”
Early in the pandemic, she was getting calls from people unable to pay their rent because they’d lost their jobs or were struggling financially. After a move to Connecticut, the state where her husband grew up, Monk started at the Mirror on her Report for America assignment and decided to continue her research.
Connecticut had a better rental assistance program in place to help people stay in their homes during the pandemic, but that’s not what caught Monk’s attention.
“A lot of the folks I was hearing from were women and single moms, often who were both grappling with their own issues of losing their housing and saying ‘I need to maintain some normalcy for my kids,’” Monk says. “We decided to really look at that question of what does this mean for kids. I spent a lot of time with families specifically to talk to kids. To get meaningful interviews from children takes some time and effort.”
For six months, Monk spent a few hours a week with a series of families, going to soccer games to build a rapport with the kids while exploring the social network that tried to help families remain housed — and learning about what it was like when that wasn’t possible.
“Connecticut has a remediation program where you get to court and a third-party can try to work out an agreement before you come to a judge. The state is now offering rent assistance as part of that remediation.” The mediator, with the tenant and landlord, will determine if paying the back rent will take care of the dispute with the landlord and, if that’s possible, the issue will be resolved.
“The problem becomes when you’re at court, to the point of an eviction, the relationship between landlord and tenant has often already deteriorated,” Monk says.
Many people experiencing homelessness are employed but either can’t afford rent or have an eviction on their record. That’s not exactly something that gives a landlord much confidence in their new tenant.
“When people think about someone experiencing homelessness, you think about people you see on your drive, asking for money on the sidewalk,” Monk says. “There are families. There are senior citizens on fixed incomes who can’t make the rent anymore. They’re not living on the streets; they’re bouncing between family and friends’ houses. They’re living in their cars. You’re just not seeing it.”
In her reporting, Monk centers the voices of children in the first three parts, then begins the fourth with the memories of a mother who was evicted as a child.
Community engagement also was a strong feature of her reporting, including a series of information sessions in which she’d meet with possible sources while bringing together service providers who could help people gain access to resources to help people secure housing. She also worked with local artists to put together a coloring book for children to help them understand their situation and help ease the difficult conversations for parents in that situation.
Nearly everyone she spoke with in her reporting has secured housing now, Monk says.
